Iran in the Twentieth Century: A Political History 9781685853099

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Tables
Preface
Acknowledgments
Map of Iran
1 Society, Revolution, and International Politics: Background to Understanding Iran
2 The Qajar Era and the Constitutional Revolution: Anglo-Russian Rivalry and Iran's Political Development
3 The Impact of World War I and the Russian Revolution
4 Internal and External Politics: Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States in Iran
5 The FaU of the Gilan Republic: Collapse from Within
6 The Reign of Reza Shah
7 The Northern Revolutions and Great Power Policy
8 The Autonomous Provincial Governments: Development and Collapse
9 The Rise of Iranian Nationalism and Reform from Above
10 Imperial Dictatorship
11 The Islamic Revolution
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

IRAN

in the Twentieth Century

IRAN

in the Twentieth Century A Political History M. Reza Ghods

Lynne Rienner Publishers • Boulder Adamantine Press Limited • London

Published in the United Slates of America in 1989 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Bouider, Colorado 80301 and in the United Kingdom by Adamantine Press Limited 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London W C 2 E 8LU © 1 9 8 9 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc.

All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ghods, M. Reza. Iran in the twentieth century : a political history / by M. Reza Ghods. B i b l i o g r a p h y : p. Includes index. I S B N 1 - 5 5 5 8 7 - 1 3 7 - 2 (alk. paper) 1. Iran—Politics and government—20th II. Title: Iran in the 20th century. DS316.6.G49 1989 955'.05—dcl9

century. I. Title.

89-30357 CIP

British Cataloguing in Publication Data Ghods, M. Reza Iran in the twentieth century: a political history.(Adamantine studies in international relations & world security, ISSN 0 9 5 4 - 6 0 7 3 ; no. 4) 1. Iran. P o l i t i c a l events I. T i t l e 955'.054 ISBN 0 - 7 4 4 9 - 0 0 2 3 - 9 Printed and bound in the United States of America The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z 3 9 . 4 8 - 1 9 8 4 .

To the memory of my mother, Shamsi and to the people of Iran

Nazemian,

Contents

List of Tables Preface Acknowledgments 1

2

ix x xii

Society, Revolution, and International Politics: Background to Understanding Iran The Social Background 1 Culture, Ideology, and the Origin and Progress of Revolution Iranian, Soviet, and Western Foreign Policies 9

6

The Qajar Era and the Constitutional Revolution: Anglo-Russian Rivalry and Iran's Political Development Politics and Economy Under Qajar Rule 14 The Emergence of Reformism 22 The Constitutional Revolution 30 The Struggle of Religious and Secular Forces 36

3

The Impact of World War I and the Russian Revolution The Jangal Movement 48 The Treaty of 1919 54 Khiabani's Revolt in Tabriz 57 The Iranian Communist Movement in the Caucasus 58

4

Internal and External Politics: Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States in Iran The Gilan Republic 65 Oil and Politics: British and U.S. Policy 68 Soviet and Iranian Communist Policies 73

5

1

The FaU of the Gilan Republic: Collapse from Within The Leftist Coup 79 Haydar Khan's Leadership 83 The Fall of the Gilan Republic 89

vii

13

45

61

78

viii

6

CONTENTS

The Reign of Reza Shah Charismatic Leadership: 1921-1926 93 Early Imperial Iran: 1926-1934 100 The Last Phase: 1934-1941 106 Foreign Policy: Prescription for Invasion The Shah's Legacy 120

93

116

7

The Northern Revolutions and Great Power Policy The Tudeh Party 126 The 1944 Oil Crisis and the Great Powers 133 Revolution in the North 138 Oil, Iran, and the Cold War 145

8

The Autonomous Provincial Governments: Development and Collapse Period of Moderate Reform 159 Division and Turmoil 165 The Collapse of the Revolutionary Governments

122

159

174

9

The Rise of Iranian Nationalism and Reform from Above Razmara's Power: 1948-1951 179 Mossadegh and the National Front: 1951-1953 182 Military Rule: 1953-1959 189 The White Revolution: 1960-1963 192

179

10

Imperial Dictatorship Imperial Consolidation: 1963-1973 197 Economic Boom and Bust: 1973-1977 199 Crescendo of Opposition: 1977-1979 204 The Oppositional Organizations 206 Ayatollah Khomeini and the Foundations of the Islamic Revolution 214

197

11

The Islamic Revolution The Shah Is Forced Out 217 The Islamic Republic 220 Conclusions 227

216

Notes Bibliography Index

231 276 285

Tables

1.1

Ethnic/Linguistic Composition of Iran

2.1

2.3 2.4

Class Breakdown of Iran's Population in the Beginning of the Twentieth Century Volume of Iranian Trade with Russia and Iranian Visas to Transcaucasia (Selected Years) Iran's Foreign Trade, 1900-1922 Class Composition of the First Majlis

21 24 33

5.1

Composition of the Red Cabinet

81

7.1

Social Composition of Party Membership, First Party Congress, August 1944

129

7.2

Composition of the Fifteenth Majlis

156

8.1

Estimated Composition of the ADP, December 1945

163

9.1 9.2

Iran's Exports and Imports, 1950-1953 Shares in 1954 Oil Consortium

188 190

Iran's Economy, 1970-1978

202

2.2

10.1

IX

4

18

Preface

This book is on a topic that has fascinated me since childhood. While growing up in Iran, I often wondered why the social movements in the country originated in the north. Because information was limited and often unavailable, I did not really find a satisfactory answer to this question until I began work on the present study. Drawing on documentary sources in seven languages as well as on extensive personal interviews, this work transcends the traditional boundaries of research. I hope that it will help to enable Western readers to understand the history of my troubled country. Although finding people who had witnessed or participated in the events discussed here, convincing them that I did not belong to any (potentially hostile) political organization, and obtaining their permission to be interviewed was sometimes not easy, I considered it vital in order to gain a fuller insight into history. It should be borne in mind that the fact that I have presented the views of this wide spectrum does not imply my adherence to any one of them. Like any human being, I have my own beliefs, which are naturally reflected in the conclusions of this book. The book—covering as it does most of a century—has a number of interacting themes, including the relationship between internal and foreign policies and the failure of the Iranian left to retain or capture political power at a number of crucial junctures. It does not attempt to provide a new theoretical explanation for the development of Shi'ism, the Islamic Revolution, or any other part of Iran's history in the twentieth century; its major task is to illustrate the continuities and discontinuities in Iranian political history. I hope it will also illustrate the role of culture in Iranian politics. The personal element dominates Iranian social relationships and political culture. Ideological or political alliances, in an unstable society such as Iran's, are based largely on personal, often familial, loyalties; to ensure personal security in Iran's volatile society, loyalty is directed inward. In the actions of Iranian statesmen, personal relationships often (perhaps usually) supercede the X

PREFACE

xi

national interest or any ideological commitment. Therefore, whenever possible, I will mention any relevant personal relationships that may help explain events. In the revolutions in Gilan, Azerbaijan, and Kurdistan in the wake of the two world wars, religious culture and personal relationships played a prominent role in destroying the revolutionary regimes. The interaction of internal and foreign policies, and the failure of the Iranian left, are similarly well-illustrated in the events of these revolutionary periods, which are examined as "case studies" because they show the continuities and discontinuities in major themes of Iranian politics so clearly. The revolutionary movements in Gilan, Azerbaijan, and Kurdistan, as well as the Islamic Revolution, reveal in their courses the full emotional and historical context of the frustrated and often misunderstood attempts of Iranians to obtain freedom. As a final note, in using sources in several languages that do not customarily use the Latin alphabet, I have generally transliterated words to approximate how they are pronounced in Tehran. However, many personal and place names have spellings widely accepted in the West, and I have used these familiar spellings wherever possible. Also in order to simplify matters for the non-Farsi-speaking reader, plurals are formed by simply adding the letter "s" to the singular form. I hope linguists will forgive this apparent lapse. I do want to bring to the attention of the reader that at times writing this book was extremely difficult because of my own deep emotional involvement. However, I have attempted to be as objective as possible while giving the Western reader an impression of how an Iranian views his country. M. Reza Ghods Denver, Colorado December 1988

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to a number of people who assisted me in the difficult but worthwhile task of research for this study for their patience and time. Above all I want to thank the professors at the University of Denver who helped me with expert suggestions in their respective fields: Jonathan Adelman aided me with his intimate knowledge of Soviet foreign policy; Charles Geddes' understanding of Iranian history and politics, especially in regard to their relations with religion and culture, was a treasured resource; Arthur Gilbert's knowledge of the cold war, diplomatic history, and historical research was extremely valuable. Joseph Szyliowicz allowed me to audit his courses on the Middle East, which were very helpful, particularly on modernization and political development in the region; his advice on the reign of Reza Shah was especially useful. Martha Cottam permitted me to attend her class on U.S. foreign policy, which helped shape my theoretical approach to the subject. Edward Jajko, Elena Danielson, and Joseph D. Dwyer of the Hoover Institute library and archives at Stanford University facilitated my research. Sally Marks of the National Archives' diplomatic branch, John Taylor of the archives' military branch, and Ibrahim Pourhadi of the Library of Congress all went well beyond the call of duty in helping me locate difficult-to-find sources. Paul Sparchman, formerly the Persian bibliographer of the University of Chicago, also gave me valuable information. Mr. and Mrs. Naser Shirzad of Iran Books bookstore in Washington, D.C., exerted themselves beyond the realm of mere salesmanship in finding me rare materials. May Smith and her staff at Denver University's Interlibrary Loan section were of great assistance. The Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library at Harvard University also proved very helpful in conducting my research. Mahmoud Ghods, my father, kindly supplied me with many books from his personal collection and searched high and low for other books I needed that were not available in the United States. Ervand Abrahamian, Sepehr Zabih, Mansour Farhang, Muriel Atkins, Firuz Kazemzadeh, Habib Ladjevardi, Richard Cottam, and Chosroe Chaqueri were all xii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

xiii

of tremendous help; Chaqueri, in particular, provided me with many muchneeded books that were unobtainable elsewhere. His 20-volume collection of documents on the Iranian left is a gold mine of primary source material that any student of Iranian affairs should study carefully. The Kurdish historian Seyyed Mohammad Samadi sent me valuable books and articles on Kurdistan. A. Z. Arabajan, the head of the Iranian Section of the Institute of Oriental Studies at the USSR Academy of Sciences, kindly read an earlier draft of the manuscript and verified and supplied exact dates for many of the events described in the book, as well as suggesting several Soviet sources that have greatly facilitated my research. I am also grateful to Farah Jahangiri, who provided me with the addresses of certain bookstores and libraries, both in this country and overseas. The interviews I conducted for this book have shed light on many obscure themes. A conversation with CPSU Central Committee member Dimitry Lisovolik illuminated the role of Great Power rapprochement in ending the IranIraq War. Karim Sanjabi granted me an insightful interview over the course of two days, which revealed much about the dynamics of the Islamic Revolution and the inability of Iranian liberals to play a major role. Sanjabi also provided considerable information about the Mossadegh era, as did other Mossadegh associates who do not wish to be named. Ali Amini, who presided over the 1963 land reform as prime minister and was Qavam's chief of staff during the Azerbaijan revolution, gave considerable insight on the workings of Iranian politics during these periods. Fereydoun Keshavarz corresponded with me providing information about the Tudeh Party during the post-World War II period. Nosratollah Jahanshahlou-Afshar, Pishevari's deputy prime minister in the autonomous government of Azerbaijan, provided valuable information on the Azerbaijan Democratic Party's ideology, organization, and strategy. Bozorg Alavi, now in East Berlin, provided valuable information on the formation of the Fifty-Three and the evolution of Pishevari's revolutionary tactics. Ardeshir Ovanessian, veteran of the Persian Communist Party, provided vital information about the Gilan Revolution, as well as events in Azerbaijan. Abolhasan Banisadr, who presided over one of the most interesting periods of the Islamic Revolution, explained, in a telephone interview, the machinations of the groups then contending for power. Mansour Farhang, Banisadr's advisor and Iran's representative in the United Nations after the Islamic Revolution, gave me an excellent picture of the Islamic Republic's foreign relations during his tenure in office. Shahpour Bakhtiar's office in Paris provided me with materials on the Islamic Revolution during Bakhtiar's tenure as the late shah's last premier, and on the political situation in southern Iran during the Azerbaijan crisis. Rahmatollah Moghaddam Maraghehi, a former governor of Azerbaijan and a member of Iran's Constituent Assembly after the Islamic Revolution, provided, through interviews and correspondence, considerable information concerning issues important to Azerbaijanis and ethnic minorities in northern Iran after the creation of the Islamic Republic. Ali Akbar Mohtadi, Razmara's

xiv

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

deputy premier, granted a personal interview, and greatly illuminated Razmara's enigmatic figure. Ali Asghar Haj Seyyed Djavadi, a writer and personal friend of Khalil Maleki, gave valuable information on Maleki's political life and beliefs. Interviews with former members of the Jangal party ( 1 9 4 5 - 1 9 4 6 ) provided valuable information regarding the political situation in the Caspian region during the Azerbaijan revolution, as well as information on the Gilan revolution of 1920-1921. I am also thankful to the offices of several political parties for providing me with vital information and materials. The Tudeh Party of Iran sent me several extremely useful books. The People's Fedayin Guerrillas—followers of Ashraf Dehgani—were also helpful. I obtained other information about the People's Fedayin Guerrillas (minority) and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan from several different personal libraries in this country, including that of the People's Fedayin Guerrillas in Denver. Ja'far Rasa, party secretary of the Communist Party of Iran, also kindly responded to questions. Kayhan Havayi (Air Kayhan), the organ of the Islamic Republic, has also proved to be a prolific source of materials from which I obtained many valuable statistics on the economy under the Pahlavi monarchs, besides insight on places to search for elusive sources. Many individuals whose names I am not at liberty to mention put me in contact with political groups, parties, and other organizations, from monarchists to the extreme left, all of whom were important for the sake of academic integrity and a balanced approach. I developed friendships with many of them, regardless of their political beliefs, and I shall always cherish their trust in me. I have used pseudonyms for those who were not comfortable with having their names appear in print. In light of the current political situation in Iran, I readily sympathize with their reluctance. Where the names of my interviewees appear, it is with their express permission. I shall always appreciate the patience of Corissa Figaro, who typed the whole manuscript and went beyond this duty by giving me stylistic advice. To her and all those mentioned above I shall be eternally grateful.

The most indubitable feature of a revolution is the direct interference of the masses in historic events. In ordinary times, the state, be it monarchical or democratic, elevates itself above the nation, and history is made by specialists— kings, ministers, bureaucrats, parliamentarians, journalists. But in revolutions, the masses break over the barrier excluding them from the political arena, sweep aside the established representatives, and create by their own interference the initial groundwork for a new regime. Whether this is good or bad we leave to the judgment of moralists. . . . The history of revolution is for us first of all the forcible entry of the masses into the political arena. Leon Trotsky, The Russian Revolution

Until you have lived in a culture yourself, and have understood its people, their language, their customs, and their particular needs, it would be useless to champion their cause, or even to analyze them. Samad Behrangi

1 Society, Revolution, and International Politics: Background to Understanding Iran

Factional strife, Persian life.

in one form

or another,

has been a marked feature

— A n n Lambton, Islamic

Society

in

of

Persia

Religion and social relations have always been important factors in Iranian politics. The geographical environment, too, has played a major role in forming the political culture. This chapter is devoted to a brief introduction of the social background of Iran—the interaction of culture and ideology that helped determine the outbreak and course of the revolutions—and the geopolitical background that also helped shape Iranian politics.

The Social Background The revolutions in Iran in 1905-1911 and 1979, and the revolutions in the northern provinces in 1920-1921 and 1945-1946, have had a profound impact on the nation's destiny. In order better to understand Iran's revolutions in the twentieth century, it is necessary first to discuss the background of those events. The class structure of Iran is a vital element in the social backgrounds of the revolutions under examination. The social structure of Iran under the Qajar dynasty formed an important part of the background of the Constitutional Revolution of 1905-1911 and the Gilan revolution of 1920-1921 and in many respects affected the later revolutions in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan in 1946, and even the Islamic Revolution of 1979. The shahs were at the apex of the social structure in Iran under the Qajar dynasty (1796-1926). The Qajar monarchs exercised a personal, patrimonial form of authority. With some modification, this system persists in Iran to the present day. The Qajars, the Pahlavis, and Ayatollah Khomeini have all exercised political authority in a patrimonial style that Mansour Farhang l

2

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

describes as "an endemic feature of Iranian political culture." 1 In Iran, politics remains a function of personality. A patrimonial pattern was present in pre-Islamic Persia; Shi'i Islam reinforced it. The Shi'ite sect is based on the descent of spiritual and political leadership, or imamat, through the line of Ali; and the imam has become the earthly substitute for the designated descendants of Ali. Richard Cottam observes that the Shi'ite sect reinforced the Iranians' strong sense of "being a unique and culturally superior people." 2 The concept of God-given hierarchical and often hereditary authority has always been integral to Shi'i Islam. A recent publication from a Qum theological center in the Islamic Republic emphasizes the centrality of authority: The people "need constant training and continual taking care of," this pamphlet observes, and without an educator they cannot reach their own perfection. . . . Is there not a n e e d for a k n o w l e d g e a b l e political authority w h o is thoroughly acquainted with the divine laws and who can guide and lead the people on the right path in the right way? The Shi'ite belief holds that . . . the people should not be without a leader. 3

When the Safavi shahs adopted Shi'i Islam as a state religion in the sixteenth century, Shi'ism became a necessary ideological support of the monarch and the social system in general. The Pahlavi monarchs, Reza Shah (ruled 1926-1941) and Mohammad Reza Shah (ruled 1941-1979), attempted to justify their personal rule with legal, rational mechanisms of authority, minimizing their attention to the religious aspects of legitimacy; but the Qajars made no such attempt to rationalize their power. T h e rule of the Qajars was arbitrary in the extreme. T h e British statesman George Curzon wrote, in 1892: In a country so backward in constitutional progress, so destitute of forms and statutes and charters, and so firmly stereotyped in the immemorial traditions of the East, the personal element, as might be expected, is largely in the ascendant; and the government of Persia is little else than the arbitrary exercise of authority by a series of units in a descending scale from the sovereign to the headman of a petty village.4

The country had no fundamental laws restricting the shah's power until the Constitutional Revolution; as will be seen in the next chapter, the revolution did not succeed in restricting or even defining the shah's power in practice. 5 While the Qajars' authority was arbitrary and uncontested, the monarchs were, paradoxically, not powerful. The Qajar shahs had no standing aimy and no viable centralized administration. Their rule depended not on force or on a

SOCIETY, REVOLUTION, A N D INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

3

centralized bureaucracy, but on manipulating one group against another. Qajar manipulation was facilitated by the fragmentation of Iranian society. 6 Iran was (and is) divided into a hodgepodge of linguistic, tribal, religious, and racial groups (see Table 1.1). Religiously, 93% of Iranians are Shi'ites, 5% are Sunnis, and 2% are Armenian and Assyrian Christians, Bahais, Jews, and Zoroastrians. Religious division reinforces ethnic and linguistic divisions, as the substantial Sunni minority is mostly confined to northern Kurdistan, and to Arabs in Khuzistan, Baluchis in Baluchistan, and Turkmans in the Caspian region. Many Iranian provinces present a microcosm of Iran's ethnic, linguistic, and religious mixture. In Khorasan, for example, one finds Persians, Kurds, Turkmans, and small numbers of Baluchis, Lurs, and Arabs. In Azerbaijan, there were four major ethnic groups in 1945: 90% Azeri Shi'ites, of whom a majority spoke only Azeri; 3% Armenian and Assyrian Christians; and 7% Kurds, primarily Sunni. 7 In this period there were also several unsettled tribes in Azerbaijan: the archconservative Shahsavan (literally "Shah-lover") tribe, the Osanlou, and the Afshar. Even in a tribal society such as that of Kurdistan, the tribes lacked solidarity; the Kurds were divided into a number of mutually hostile clans, and into Sunnis in the north and Shi'ites in the south. Furthermore, the Sunni and Shi'ite sects, throughout Iran, were divided into numerous subsects, which on occasion were actively hostile to one another. Iranian towns and provinces are geographically divided from one another by four major mountain ranges and a vast central desert, and there are no navigable rivers in the country. In the Qajar era this harsh topography was exacerbated by extremely poor roads and communications. With these geographical constraints to perpetuate the fragmentation of the population, it is not surprising that Iranians at the turn of the century rarely had a sense of national identity. The Qajars, whose policy was to divide and rule, used these religious, ethnic, tribal, linguistic, and geographical barriers among the population to maintain themselves in power. One tribe that was particularly useful to the monarchy in this system of manipulation was the Shahsavan, a tribe created by Abbas I the Great (ruled 1587-1629) out of a variety of non-Turkic-speaking tribes, including many Shi'ite Kurds; it was moved to Azerbaijan to counterbalance powerful tribes already based in the region and to garrison the province. Under the Qajar and Pahlavi dynasties, the Shahsavan tribe remained in effect an instrument of royal power, though by this time it had adopted the Azeri language. 8 Iran's social and geographic fragmentation, so convenient in the Qajar system of government, resulted in what Nikki Keddie describes as a vertical division of society. Instead of being divided into economic classes, Qajar Iran was divided into social communities that included rich and poor alike. 9 Iranians were not loyal to their nation, or to any economic grouping; instead, they were

4

IRAN IN T H E T W E N T I E T H CENTURY

Tabic 1.1.

Ethnic/Linguistic Composition of Iran

Total Persian speakers Subgroups: Standard Farsi dialect Lurs Bakhtiaris Gilaki, Mazandarani, other dialects Total Turkic speakers Subgroups: Azeris Qashqais, Turkmans, and Shahsavans Kurds Baluchis Arabs Armenians and Assyrians Others

60% 45% 2% 4% 9% 25% 16% 9% 7% 2% 3% 2% 1%

A definitive linguistic analysis of Iran is difficult to obtain. This approximate breakdown is based on several sources, including The New Encyclopedia Britannica, vol. 6 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1986), p. 375; Britannica Book of the Year, 1987 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1987), p. 670; Ervand Abrahamian, "Communism and Communalism in Iran: The Tudah and the Firqah-i Dimukrat," International Journal of Middle East Studies 1 (1970):293; and S. I. Bruk, "The Ethnic Composition of Iran," English summary of Russian text in Central Asian Review 4 (1956):417^t20.

loyal to their family, clan, local community, or religious sect. This clannishness persists in Iran even today. Iran is primarily an agrarian society; agriculture has always been the principal source of income for both lower and upper classes. The greatest number of the Iranian population are peasants. Even in the 1950s, 80 percent of Iranians were peasants. 10 Peasant villages, of which there were around 50,000 in the 1950s, tended to be small, with between 20 and 500 people. In the Qajar era, and later when the central government's power weakened, nomadic tribes attacked villages, contributing to the people's sense of their own village as a fortification against outsiders. Many villages, though especially in sparsely populated northern Kurdistan, were composed of settled tribesmen. In all of Iranian Kurdistan, there were 140 tribes and clans. The tribal structure contributed to the clannish isolationism of many villagers, and to the patrimonial structure of their communities. 11 The landlords' relations to the peasants were patrimonial, much like the shah's relations with his subjects. Wrote the (later) National Front leader Karim Sanjabi in the 1930s: The landowner in Persia is not considered by his peasants as a businessman linked to them by contractual tics, but on the contrary as a

SOCIETY, REVOLUTION, AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

5

chief, a master, a lord. . . . Also, by means of the legitimate right of o w n e r s h i p of the land, he e x e r c i s e s a right of s o v e r e i g n t y and organization over the village. . . . The landowner is the intermediary between the peasants and the public authority, an intermediary who totally supplants the latter. 1 2

The peasants' dependency on their landlords can hardly be overestimated. After the land reform of 1963, when much land was given to the peasants, there were many cases of poor peasants who were desperate to have outsiders assume a new authority over them, to take over the former landlords' functions. 13 Iranian peasants were dependent on their landlords both emotionally and financially. The arid soil in most of Iran made irrigation indispensable for agriculture; irrigation, along with plow animals and seeds, were in the landlords' control. Thus the peasants' livelihood depended on the landlords' goodwill. 14 Since Iranian landlords have traditionally been active in the government, they have often chosen to live in the capital, leaving the management of the villages to their kadkhoda, or bailiff. The kadkhoda was a sort of headman, whose power over the villagers was considerable, all the more so as he generally had the peasants' emotional allegiance. 15 Although Iranian villages were increasingly integrated into the national and world economies during the late nineteenth century, the peasants' contact with the nation and the world was through their landlords or kadkhodas, and they remained isolated. Landless peasants provided labor in return for use of the landlords' land and tools of production (usually in a sharecropping situation) throughout most of Iran. In the beginning of the Pahlavi era, 60 percent of all arable land belonged to 2,500-3,000 landowners, who rented the land to peasants; 10 percent was waqf or religious endowment property; 4 percent was kaliseh or state land; and 14 percent belonged to tribal leaders. Only 6 percent of peasants owned their own land, and many of these had to rent animals and plows from the landlords. 16 The reliance on production teams and irrigation works necessitated communal organization, which limited competition for resources and contributed to social stability. The social pressure among the peasants working together in production teams was certainly a conservative force. Sociologist Mono Ono wrote of Iranian peasants in the 1960s, "[T]he speech and deeds of an individual can never escape people's watchful eyes and are always kept under silent pressure from others." 17 Not only were the landlord and his kadkhoda included in the peasants' perception of their community; local mullahs, or clergymen, too, contributed to the social cohesion and stability of the villages. Islam reinforced the concept of the inviolability of private property and helped inhibit peasants from competing with landlords for resources. 18 The landlords' rank in the social structure was reinforced by Islam. The Qur'an says,

6

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

O, ye who believe! Obey Allah, and obey the Apostle, And those charged with authority among you. 1 9

As noted above, Shi'i Islam placed particular emphasis on the necessity for leadership and submission to authority. This emotional/religious need was much in evidence among Iranian peasants even after the 1963 land reform. 20 Thus, hierarchical social relationships, and geographical and ethnic divisions, prevented any cohesion in the nationwide peasant community. The majority of Iranian peasants were politically apathetic. But in the north, particularly in Gilan and Azerbaijan, peasant political apathy was less evident than in other regions. This state of affairs can be traced to differences in economic organization in these provinces, where—unlike most of Iran— there is enough rainfall to grow crops without extensive reliance on communal irrigation. Peasants in these provinces were better off economically than their counterparts elsewhere in Iran, especially in the nineteenth century, when they were exporting their products to tsarist Russia. Azerbaijan, in particular, was the breadbasket of Iran. In 1948, a mere third of its produce sufficed to feed its entire population, and the remainder was exported to other provinces of Iran. In Gilan at the beginning of Reza Shah's reign, 12 percent of peasants were small landowners in their own right, and 30 or 40 percent had their own livestock and plowing instruments. Tenant farmers in both Gilan and Azerbaijan were given unusually secure contracts, so that their landlords could not simply evict them at will. This relative security and prosperity gave the northern peasants an unusual degree of freedom from the landlords' influence. 21 Population in Gilan and Azerbaijan was much denser than elsewhere in Iran, and villages were closer together. Population density in Azerbaijan during the 1945-1946 revolution was thirty people per square kilometer—about twice the population density of Iran overall; a seventh of Iran's total population lived there. Gilan had the additional advantage of having a homogeneous population without tribal structures or language barriers to divide one community from another; 95 percent of the Gilanis spoke the Gilaki dialect of Farsi. Northern Kurdistan, by contrast, was one of the most sparsely populated regions of Iran; in 1948, its population was only 250,000, of whom very few were urban dwellers, and almost all were members of mutually antagonistic tribes. 22 The role played by the culture of northern Iran in the politics of the nation will be developed throughout this book.

Culture, Ideology, and the Origin and Progress of Revolution Since this work is devoted in large proportion to upheavals in Iranian politics, it seems advisable to give some background to the origins of Iran's revolutionary

SOCIETY, REVOLUTION, A N D INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

7

crises. The interaction of culture and radical political ideology that helped shape the course of Iran's revolutions also deserves a brief introduction. Revolutions occur when a portion of the citizenry is dissatisfied with their government to the point where severe sociopolitical stress develops. The roots of political stress that helped originate twentieth-century Iranian revolutions lie in the authoritarian governments that preceded them. The Pahlavi monarchs— Reza Shah and his son, Mohammad Reza—failed to achieve the mass participation that would have given their regimes political legitimacy. This resulted in crises that threatened to (and in the case of Mohammad Reza Shah actually did) sweep away the states they had built. Reza Shah's modernization programs did not contribute to the political legitimacy of his regime though they did interact with his nationalism to create a new middle class. However, his attempts at modernization, unlike those of his contemporary Mustafa Kemal Ataturk of Turkey, did not create modern political institutions through which the new middle class could channel its views into the political process; neither did the subsequent modernization by his son. The Pahlavi monarchs did not establish a political environment in which power could be delegated or transferred peacefully. Their insecurity prompted them to reinforce the existing divisions among the political elites in order to maximize their own power. 23 Reza Shah and his son viewed mass participation in politics as a threat rather than as a potential support for their regimes, thereby alienating the very segment of society whose support they needed most to achieve political legitimacy. Mohammad Reza's refusal to give political elites any meaningful share of power alienated them and prompted elite figures to mobilize the masses against the monarchy. 24 Reza Shah's nationalistic modernization also alienated non-Persian ethnic minorities within Iran. The two major ethnic minorities dealt with in this book are the Kurds and the Azerbaijanis, both of whom have a distinctive language; the Kurds of northern Kurdistan are additionally distinguished from the Persians by their Sunni faith. 25 The more Reza Shah tried to implement his traditional brand of nationalism by Persianizing Iranian culture, the more he made the Azeris and Kurds conscious of their own ethnic distinctness. The Pahlavis stressed a historical continuity with the ancient Persian Empire in an attempt to achieve political legitimacy. 26 In point of fact, however, this concept not only failed to achieve the political assimilation of ethnic minorities, it actually alienated them and promoted their ethnic consciousness. This widening of the cleavages in society increased the structural imbalances in Iran, helping to destabilize the nation. 27 A crucial component of this work is analysis of the failure of the Iranian political left to create a unifying force that could stabilize society. For this analysis, a basic background on the interaction of leftist ideology with Iranian society and culture is helpful. Because all of the revolutions in Iran involved peasants and the middle classes in varying proportions, it is also important to

8

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

study the role of peasantry and bourgeoisie, roles that were important in Iranian Communist programs. But the Communists, partly because of their own ambivalence toward these groups, never developed an effective strategy to win the loyalty of either. The failure of Communist revolutionaries to obtain a mass base in the countryside was crucial to the collapse of the revolutionary governments in Gilan in 1921 and in Azerbaijan in 1946, as will be seen in coming chapters. Similarly, "united front" approaches, whereby Communists would ally with bourgeois groups to attain certain goals, met with poor success in Iran. In Communist revolutionary theory and practice, the question of how to handle the bourgeoisie has always been a dilemma.28 In Iran, the united front concept was used in different ways depending on historical circumstances, as there were many different bourgeois factions in Iran that could be included in united fronts, and some Iranian Communists were (and are) leery of having any united front at any point in the revolutionary process. For example, Soviet leaders (notably Stalin) supported the bourgeois national revolutionary leader Kuchik Khan, who founded the Gilan Soviet Republic in 1920, in the early stages of the Gilan revolution. Later the Soviets supported the bourgeois national reformist Reza Khan (later Reza Shah), who suppressed Kuchik's autonomous government in Gilan. Iranian Communists in this period did not unanimously support either of these policies. The ramifications of the united front concept haunt Iranian—and other—Communist movements up to this day. The interaction of revolution and culture also remains a dilemma in Communist revolutionary policy. Culture interacts with revolution in two very important areas: religion and nationalism. Marx did not sufficiently appreciate the importance of these essentially noneconomic aspects of society, concentrating his analyses on the dialectical process that resulted from the advance of technology. For him, culture was a product of the socioeconomic structure, which served to legitimize the material interests of the ruling class. Under capitalism, culture peipetuates a false ideology to serve this end; it is not, in itself, a force for social change or stability. Marx believed workers have nothing to sell but their labor; the factory system and automation requires many laborers in the system of production. This enforced cooperation makes the workers think as an organic unit, which in turn creates a political consciousness among them; political consciousness makes them aware of their political power, and such awareness in turn leads to collective action that wiH bring about socialism. This dialectical analysis omits the environmental aspects of political culture outside the factory that might contribute to the workers' values. These environmental aspects include family, home, education, religion, and a whole catalog of cultural traditions. All of these non-labor-oriented aspects of culture are important components shaping the political culture and socialization of members of any social class. Lenin, a more practical revolutionary than Marx, realized that the "concrete features" of the revolutionary struggle had to conform

SOCIETY, REVOLUTION, A N D INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

9

with the specific economic, political, cultural, and national composition of the country in which it was waged. 29 One aspect of culture that is particularly important in Iranian communism is religion, which Marx dismissed as the "opium of the masses." Marxist politicians in the twentieth century have been obliged to give the matter greater consideration; but they, too, have tended to skirt the issue. Lenin seemed to take it for granted that the revolutionary struggle itself would remove "the yoke of religion that weighs upon mankind." 30 Stalin, though a vigorous supporter of atheism in countries where the revolution had already succeeded, gave a general caution to Communist leaders in Moslem areas where revolution was still in its early stages to be careful in dealing with shari'a, the body of Islamic religious laws governing daily conduct and affairs. However, Stalin failed to give more specific guidelines on addressing the problem of religion. In Iran, any successful social revolution must avail itself of the country's existing political, social, and religious culture. Any revolutionary movement must have an ideology; and a successful revolutionary ideology must incorporate elements of the cultural peculiarities of the society. 31 Neglect of the cultural foundations of political power has often led Marxist leaders to mechanistic attempts to impose Marxist theories on traditional societies. In nations such as Iran, with strong religious and nationalist traditions, this mechanistic approach has contributed to the Communists' failure to establish ideological hegemony. A combination of religion and other cultural factors, such as nationalism and hierarchical and xenophobic traditions, formed a barrier to the success of the secular revolutionary regimes. Leaders in the Constitutional Revolution, in Gilan, and in Azerbaijan, did not take into consideration the most important components of the society's political culture, such as religion. Therefore they failed to establish an effective "national myth," which Chalmers Johnson has described as an "ideological framework within which the mobilized people may understand and express their behavior as a nation." 32

Iranian, Soviet, and Western Foreign Policies Another important field that helps provide a background for understanding the political history of Iran is foreign policy. In this work, three areas of foreign policy will be important: the foreign policy of Iran, that of the Soviet Union, and the policies of the Western powers—Great Britain and the United States. Iranian foreign policy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is largely the product of the influence exercised by the Great Powers upon Iran. The various nations that have sought to establish or consolidate their political dominance over all or part of Iran have done so by seeking to diminish or eliminate the influence (political, economic, or military) of other nations. Thus, for example, the 1919 treaty between Iran and Great Britain was designed to

10

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

establish England's political hegemony over Iran at the expense of all other powers. In an effort to preserve Iran's territorial unity and political independence, Iranian politicians have sought to create a political equilibrium among these rival powers, i.e., a balance of political influences. Political equilibrium can be either positive or negative. A state of positive equilibrium is achieved when, in order to counterbalance or decrease the influence of one major power, Iranian statesmen increase the influence of another. An example of this positive political equilibrium is the Khoshtaria concession of northern oil to a Russian citizen, theoretically balancing the D'Arcy concession granting southern oil to a British citizen. Proponents of positive equilibrium in Iran have occasionally sought to introduce another power in order to counterbalance the influence of those currently exercising political influence over the country—i.e., they have pursued a "third-power policy." In both world wars, Iranian leaders sought to ally themselves with Germany to reduce or eliminate the influence of other powers. In World War I, Iranian statesmen signed an alliance with Germany to rid Iran of British and tsarist Russian political hegemony. In the theory of negative equilibrium, no foreign powers are granted any economic, political, or military concessions that will introduce or increase their influence in Iran. The implementation of this concept requires the elimination of any existing foreign influence; this is achieved by the cancellation or annulment of all treaties, agreements, or concessions that have been granted by Iran to foreign powers. Proponents of negative equilibrium have sought to create a symmetrical pattern of interaction, believing that the policy of positive equilibrium has created an unequal pattern of interaction between Iran and other nations and that this inequality in the international arena has long been a major obstacle to obtaining and retaining Iranian economic and political independence. For example, when the liberal nationalist Mohammad Mossadegh nationalized Iranian oil in 1950, he did so in order to create negative equilibrium. When one nation acquired an oil concession in Iran, Mossadegh believed, other powers would try to reach parity by obtaining a concession of a similar nature. 33 The roles played by both negative and positive theories of equilibrium in forming Iranian foreign policy will be explained throughout the present work. The USSR's relations with Iran (and with other countries) can be analyzed in terms of the Soviets' own interpretations and perceptions of their foreign policies. In this framework, the two most crucial components of Soviet foreign policy are Marxist ideology and defense of the "Socialist camp" in general and the USSR in particular. Soviet statesmen perceive their country as a catalyst for eventual socialist world revolution. The USSR, in their view, is an ideological base from which Marxist theory can be extended to all parts of the world and from which all progressive social forces can be united.34 It is in this context that Soviet support of bourgeois nationalist leaders such as Reza Khan and Ataturk

SOCIETY, REVOLUTION, AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS

11

m u s t be understood. By supporting such leaders, the Soviets sought to contribute to their own strategic security while at the same time advancing the social transformation of other countries and creating' class base for eventual social revolution. There are strategic components to this perception that explain Soviet tactics in the international arena in the past and the present. The security of the USSR is essential to preserve this socialist center. The Soviets have consolidated this security in different ways at different times. According to Communist Party Central Committee member Georgi Arbatov, the USSR's relations with other nations are determined by the Soviet assessment of the socioeconomic factors that help shape international policies. 3 5 Thus, in the periods this book is concerned with, the Soviets supported leaders they perceived as bourgeois progressives in the belief that this would change the "correlation of forces" in Iran in the direction of socialism. Western statesmen's views of foreign policy are often categorized as "idealistic," devoted to absolute morality among nations, or "realistic," pragmatically designed to gain wealth or power. It should be noted that, as Quincy Wright observes, a foreign policy value system such as that advocated by the idealists may in itself contribute to a state's power, supposedly the goal of realists: "The advantage of larger armies, navies, and air forces may be overweighed by superior capacity to gain allies" that an international perception of a nation as honorable and humanitarian can provide. 3 6 The U.S. policy, during and after World War II, of dismantling British interests in the Middle East and particularly in Iran was motivated by such an idealistic component of a realistic approach. This work will demonstrate that both idealism and realism contributed to the formation of U.S. foreign policy in Iran in the critical periods we are considering. Realism was also the major force shaping British foreign policy; both U.S. and British realism were motivated partly by economic considerations. The Western conception of "cold war" differs from that of the Soviet Union. While the Soviets attribute the creation of the cold war to imperialist machinations, U.S. and British leaders attribute it to Soviet expansionism. George Kennan and Arthur Schlesinger say that the intransigence of Soviet ideology and the "paranoia" of Soviet leaders contributed to the cold war after World W a r II. 3 7 " C o n t a i n m e n t " was a m e t h o d by which this Soviet expansionism could be countered without resorting to combat. Since the nineteenth century, the British had attempted to contain what British leaders perceived as the expansion of the tsarist empire in all directions. In the period since World War II, U.S. statesmen have articulated this general tendency into official policy and given it m o r e ideological content, in what they have perceived as their struggle with Communist ideology and political power. The Truman Doctrine proposed that the United States counter Soviet "subversion" by supporting "free peoples who are resisting subjugation by armed minorities

12

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

or by outside pressures." 3 8 In his July 1947 "X article," U.S. diplomat Kcnnan proposed the containment policy in its classic form: Soviet pressure against the free something that can be contained of counter-force at a series of political points, corresponding to foreign p o l i c y . 3 9

institutions of the western world is by the adroit and vigilant application constantly shifting geographical and the shifts and manoeuvres of Soviet

Even before it had been articulated in these clear terms, this containment policy, and T r u m a n ' s doctrine, led the United States into a political confrontation with the Soviet Union in northern Iran in 1945-1946. The U.S. containment policy, like a number of Soviet policies, affected Iran's internal politics. For example, in 1950, the containment policy helped win General Ali Razmara the premiership. We will analyze the relationship between the cold war and events in northern Iran in these years, and show that these events were both results of and contributing factors to the development of the cold war after World War II.

2 The Qajar Era and the Constitutional Revolution: Anglo-Russian Rivalry and Iran's Political Development

Whenever 1 want to travel to the South, the Tsar's ambassador objects. Whenever I want to go to the North, the English ambassador objects. To perdition with a kingdom where a king cannot traverse his own country! —Naser al-din Shah (nineteenth century) We did not know much about constitutional government ourselves, but we had heard that constitutional governments provide security and we decided to establish a constitutional prosperity. . . . Therefore government in this country. —Ayatollah Sayyid Mohammad Tabatabai (ca. 1907)

The major themes that have dominated Iran's political history in the twentieth century are rooted in the Qajar and Constitutional eras. These themes include the interaction of foreign policy with the nation's internal affairs, the crippling effects of local, linguistic, and religious factionalism on political and economic development, and the rivalry between religious and secular forces. This chapter will explain the emergence of these currents in Iran's internal politics through a discussion of the Constitutional Revolution of 1906-1911, which failed to achieve Iran's economic and political sovereignty. This discussion will provide vital background for subsequent events: The Gilan revolution is directly traceable to the failure of the Constitutional Revolution; both the 1945-1946 revolution and the Islamic Revolution of 1979 were, though less directly, also results of Iran's failure to achieve independence of political action. The foreign policies of the Great Powers and Iran toward one another were observable in this early period in forms recognizably similar to those of the 1920s, 1940s, and even the 1980s. The concept of equilibrium—the guiding force behind Iran's foreign policy through much of the twentieth century—was developed by the Qajar monarchs and their ministers, as was the third-power 13

14

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

policy, as a method to alleviate Iran's economic and political dependence on a tenuous bipartisan balance. In the Qajar era, too, the (still persistent) practice of coordinating an internal political equilibrium with equilibrium in foreign relations developed. This internal equilibrium has helped shape Iran's subsequent social and political development. Politics and Economy Under Qajar Rule The Qajars' system of government both reflected and contributed to the fragmentation of Iranian society. The Qajars, a minority Turkman tribe from the Caspian region, had no real power base in Iran; they attempted to legitimize their rule by "Persianizing" their court's ceremonies and administration. The Qajars kept their throne by manipulating one rival faction (tribal, religious, or racial) against another. They formed marriage ties with most tribal and local leaders; the royal harem became a microcosm of the fragmented society.1 The Qajars employed existing local "governments" (i.e., local khans, governors, or kadkhodas) to collect taxes or raise military units. The local powers' obedience in these matters was generally secured by threats to unleash their rivals against them. In return for this nominal loyalty, the monarchs allowed the local authorities to rule without interference. In tribal areas such as northern Kurdistan and the Bakhtiari and Qashqai areas in the south, where urban or provincial authority did not extend, the Qajars had to maintain their limited power by fueling tribal antagonisms. The fact that tribes were exempt from taxation (save on animals), provided they contributed cavalry levies, illustrates the fundamental weakness of the Qajars.2 This system of manipulation perpetuated patriarchal social relations, localism, and fragmentation, all of which made efficient administration all but impossible. To cite a fairly typical example: in 1872, when the central government tried to collect taxes directly from tribal villagers in northern Kurdistan without going through their sheikh— the Sunni religious/tribal leader—the Kurdish tribesmen refused to pay, sparking a major confrontation with the central government3 The Qajar Iranian army (around 60,000 men) was even weaker than the bureaucracy. In the 1872 incident in Kurdistan, for example, it took the government several months to muster the forces to suppress the tribal uprising. The cavalry was raised entirely from tribal levies, and cavalry units would follow only their tribal leaders. The infantry was also raised haphazardly on a local level by regional officers and landlords and served unwillingly (often without pay) on at best a part-time basis. In both cavalry and infantry, tribal and ethnic antagonism often prevented efficient cooperation. The army in Azerbaijan, for instance, was composed of tribal units (Afshar, Osanlou, and Shahsavan) that would follow only their tribal khans. Kurds and Azeris were particularly reluctant to cooperate with one another in military campaigns and

THE QAJAR ERA AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

15

were hostile to other ethnic groups garrisoned in their provinces. In 1848, the population of Khorasan (Kurds, Turkmans, and Persians) revolted against the Azeri garrison, antagonized by the Azeris' ethnic distinctness. Non-Shi'ite Iranians were undoubtedly alienated by the fact that only Shi'ite soldiers were recruited into the standing army. 4 It is a tribute to the Qajars' skill at manipulation that they were able to retain the throne for so long with such frail bureaucratic and military structures. Their position as "supreme rulers" of the country was due entirely to their able exploitation of Iran's social fragmentation. Ervand Abrahamian has described the Qajar shahs as "despots without the instruments of despotism": "The Qajar dynasty ruled nineteenth century Iran with neither the instruments of cocrcion nor the science of administration, but with the practice of prudent retreats and the art of manipulating all the possible variations in the complex web of communal rivalries."5 Under the Qajar government, a uniform legal code was plainly impossible and, indeed, was never implemented. Even the currency denominations and their relative values varied widely from one region to another; some cities had their own private bills or coinages. Legal title to landed property was not firmly established until the reign of Reza Shah. In practice, this legal uncertainty helped secure peasant tenure, and secure tenancy inhibited a rural migration to the urban areas such as that which happened in England following the enclosure movement. The Shi'ite shari'a had been established as the law of the realm by the Safavi dynasty (1499-1736). The ulama, or high-ranking clergy, had absolute legal power over all business affairs, including the certification of bankruptcy and all property transfers. Shari'a law on these points could be interpreted by the local clergy in vastly different ways. 6 The uncentralized, patrimonial Qajar bureaucracy did not facilitate the development of either legal security or national economic unity, both prerequisites for a national bourgeoisie. The power of the local authorities—or of the Shah acting through the local authorities—over life and property was unrestrained by any secular law. Unlike European monarchs, the Qajars never tried to ally themselves with the bourgeoisie to limit the aristocracy's power. Merchants' property was subject to arbitrary confiscation by the Qajar shahs. The central government levied a tax of 20 percent of total revenue on all merchants and artisans.7 Various concessions and capitulations from the shah's government protected the foreign competition that emerged in the nineteenth century. Imports increased more rapidly than exports, and the self-sufficient local economies of many Iranian cities and villages were destroyed. This situation made Iranian merchants wary of investing in internal industry. Hence, existing local industries, notably silk refineries, declined in the course of the nineteenth century, and the rare attempts to establish new industries failed because of government indifference or even opposition. Some Iranian merchants invested in

16

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

the agricultural sectors of industry, producing raw materials such as cotton and silk for export. This gave them cash to buy foreign industrial imports, which they could retail either independently or as agents of the foreign powers. Thus a segment of Iran's merchant class turned into a "comprador bourgeoisie," which was dependent on the world market but which did not help to develop independent industries within Iran. The comprador bourgeoisie invested their profits in land, reinforcing Iran's dependency.8 While the comprador bourgeoisie benefited financially from their political and economic dependence on the two great foreign powers, they became acutely conscious of their awkward position. They were exposed to Western political ideas, often traveling and sending their children to Europe for education. However, the personal nature of the Qajar rule denied political participation to this rising class and threatened their financial status. This new bourgeoisie eventually sought to create a strong, centralized government that would promote Iran's economic and political independence. A modern Iranian state could limit the shah's concessions and arbitrary tax impositions. Thus this new middle class allied itself with the traditional bourgeoisie of the bazaar, or central market. The traditional, bazaari bourgeoisie of the late Qajar era had been impoverished by the English and Russian control of many commodities, including tea, tobacco, and many industrial goods. For political support the bazaaris turned to their traditional political allies, the ulama. These high-ranking clerics depended on the bazaar for financial support; the major mosques were located in the bazaars, and bazaari merchants gave 20 percent of their earnings to the mosque. The ulama were also linked to middle and upper bourgeois families by marriage. These ties were cemented in the Safavi period, as were the clergy's ties—through charitable institutions as well as spiritual guidance—to the urban poor.9 The mutual dependence of the bazaaris and the ulama is a crucial factor in twentieth-century Iranian politics. The bazaaris relied on the ulama for political support and protection, and the ulama depended on the bazaaris for economic support. Despite the various interests that members of Iran's middle classes had in common with one another, the social and political cohesion that would have helped to create a true national bourgeoisie was lacking in Iran. The comprador bourgeoisie, the bazaaris, and the ulama were all divided by ethnic, regional, and political affiliations.10 To raise capital for their foreign purchases, the dynasty and the landlords had to extract more cash from the agricultural sector. Landlords pressured the peasants to grow cash crops for export, especially tobacco, opium, silk, cotton, and rice. Landlord-dependent subsistence fanners bore the brunt of this quest for cash. The peasants had to pay direct taxes on agricultural land, animals, water wells, and, in some regions, head-taxes and household taxes. After Fath Ali Shah came to power in 1797, the peasants had to pay 20 percent of their agricultural revenue to the government; at some periods under the Qajars, this figure peaked at 35 percent. In Khuzistan the peasants were the sole taxpayers,

THE QAJAR ERA AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

17

and they paid a third of their produce to the government (through the landlords, the usual intermediaries). 11 (For the class breakdown of Qajar Iran, see Table 2.1.) In the nineteenth century, the expanding European powers, Britain and Russia, came into close contact with Qajar Iran. Iran's rulers attempted to use these powers in the same manipulative way that Iranian rulers traditionally used internal factions: They tried to play one power off against another to bolster their own rule. The Qajar rulers surrendered the customs and large segments of Iran's economy to British and Russian control in exchange for personal loans. The Great Powers were able to use this manipulation to their own considerable advantage, using Iran's internal weakness to establish economic hegemony over separate "spheres of interest." The British Imperial Bank and the Russian Lending Bank together controlled Iran's money market. Nine-tenths of the tiny Iranian "proletariat" worked in industrial centers controlled by foreigners. 12 The Great Powers became actively involved in the manipulation of internal power centers in Iran. The court, prime ministers, merchants, tribal leaders, and provincial governors became their pawns, as well as pawns of the shah. Through these sources of internal political influence, and sometimes through the threat of external force, Russia and Britain acquired territorial and commercial concessions in Iran. Iranian merchants could not compete with the industrial imports of Britain and Russia because these two nations controlled Iran's tariffs through their power over the customs. As a result of a series of Irano-Russian wars in the early nineteenth century, Iran lost territories in the Caucasus to Russia. The Russian goal in this period was to secure its southern borders by preserving Iran as a buffer state between the Ottoman Empire and British India, and itself. The tsars pursued this aim by maintaining the Qajars in power, the Qajars' dynastic succession was protected by the Romanovs. Britain acquired control over the island of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf, and over Afghanistan, parts of which had been under nominal Iranian suzerainty. 13 Britain's cardinal aim was to limit Russian influence in Iran. British policy was to weaken the central government by negotiating for concessions with tribes (such as the Bakhtiars), instead of with the central government, and by attempting to sway the Qajars from their generally pro-Russian policy. Britain regarded the central and southern provinces as its area of political influence. Curzon wrote in 1892, in his voluminous book Persia and the Persian Question: Above all we may make it certain that, whatever destiny befall her in the north, in regions beyond the sphere of our possible interference, Persia shall retain inviolate the centre and the south, and be able to say to an invader, "Thus far and no farther." British ascendance, commercial and political, in the Southern zone . . . is the only means by which this aim can be secured. 14

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IRAN IN T H E TWENTIETH CENTURY

Table 2.1. Class Breakdown of Iran's Population in the Beginning of the Twentieth Century

% 5,500,000

55.

2,500,000

25.

600,000 320,000 1.080,000 (2,000,000)

6. 3.2 10.8 20.

Settled peasants Tribesmen (includes Kurds, Lurs, Baluchis, Arabs, Bakhtiaris, Qashqais, and Turkmans) City dwellers Merchants and ulama Artisans, refiners, etc. Food producers, small craftsmen, menial laborers, and servants (Total city dwellers) Total population

10,000,000

100.

As census data for this period is lacking, the above figures are estimates, not confirmed data. The sources for this table are M. S. Ivanov, Tarikhe Novine Iran [Contemporary History of Iran], trans, from Russian by Houshang Tizabi and Hassan Ghaempanah (Stockholm: Tudeh Publishing Center, 1977), pp. 8-9; and "Asare Sultan Zadeh [The Works of Sultan Zadeh]," in Chosroe Chaqueri, ed., Asnade Tarikhy: Jonbeshe Kargari Sosial-Demokrasi va Kommunisti-e Iran [Historical Documents: The Workers' Social Democratic and Communist Movement in Iran]. 20 vols. (Florence: Mazdak, 1970s), vol. 4, p. 45.

By granting a conccssion first to one and then to the other, the Qajars created a state of positive equilibrium that preserved their tenuous rule. The third-power policy, long a staple of Iran's internal affairs, entered its international relations. The 1807 Treaty of Finkenstein with Napoleonic France was the first instance wherein Iran tried to balance Britain and Russia with a third power. The financial enrichment of their dynasty was a secondary goal of the Qajars, which they also pursued through manipulating the Great Powers' rivalry. A series of loans indebted Iran to both Britain and Russia. A spate of alternating concessions to British and Russian subjects surrendered Iran's economic resources, including customs revenues in both north and south. Lianazoff, a Russian merchant, received a concession for Caspian fisheries, for example, while Baron Julius von Reuter, a British citizen, received a concession that encompassed practically all aspects of the economy in the south; most of this concession was cancelled, but Reuter retained mining and banking privileges. 15 The differences between Russia's political-economic influence in the north and Britain's in the south accentuated pre-existing cultural distinctions between these regions. In the north, political and economic ties with Russia produced a relative degree of social and cultural dynamism. Tabriz's location and Turkic language made it a natural center for merchants from the Caucasus and the Ottoman Empire; the city also became the home base for the crown prince. The court of Crown Prince Abbas Mirza, Fath Ali Shah's son, endured in Azerbaijan

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19

for thirty-six years (1798-1833) as a magnet for international diplomatic and trade missions. With their close contacts with the Russians, Abbas Mirza and his minister Gaem Magam-i Farahani were acutely conscious of Iran's backwardness. They sent selected students to Russia and England to remedy the situation. Abbas Mirza was especially interested in modernizing his local army: Iran's first modem weapons factory was opened in Tabriz. He also established a modern glass factory, with the assistance of Armenian merchants, and a publishing house was founded. However, even at this early date, modernization faced substantial opposition from the clergy, and the crown prince had to proceed with caution. 16 Tabriz's economic and cultural preeminence continued throughout the nineteenth century. In 1888, the city opened Iran's first Western-style elementary school. By the beginning of the twentieth century, there were around a hundred factories in Tabriz (including the only match factories in the country) employing a total of 10,000 workers. 17 The northern provinces of Azerbaijan and Gilan were well-situated for trade, not only with Russia (through roads connecting Azerbaijan with the Caspian port of Astara), but with Turkey and Iraq. The major roads to the Black Sea led through Azerbaijan. Within Azerbaijan, massive Lake Urumieh connected diverse cities and facilitated trade and communication. 18 In the south, the British were reluctant to develop industry that might compete with their own products. Their mercantilist imperial policy avoided industrial development throughout their empire, even in densely populated India. Industrial development would in any case have been hampered by the low population density in Britain's sphere of influence. The only industry the British developed in the south were the oil refineries, where Iranian workers prepared crude oil for export. All sixty-one factories that existed at the end of the Qajar era were in the Russian sphere of influence, and all except one were in the northern provinces. The Russians laid a railway line between Enzeli and Rasht, and another between Tabriz and Jolfa, and they paved the road between Enzeli and Tehran. The Russians modernized the Gilani port of Enzeli, through which commerce with and travelers to continental Europe generally passed in the nineteenth century, making Enzeli one of Iran's most prosperous cities. 19 Obviously, the trade with Russia substantially benefited the middle class in the north. The size and importance of the middle class in Gilan and Azerbaijan increased markedly, and, by the end of the Qajar era, Azerbaijan's middle class was the largest, both in numbers and percentage, of any Iranian province. 20 The economic contact between northern Iran and tsarist Russia increased the political awareness of the local population. Peasants in the north, even in impoverished northern Kurdistan, were more literate than were their southern counterparts, and northern merchants often sent their children to tsarist universities for their education. 21 Cultural contacts also arose through labor arrangements. Russian workers came to Azerbaijan and Gilan, and Gilani and Azerbaijani workers went to

20

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Russia as seasonal laborers. The Russians employed 4,200 workers in their fishery in Gilan; 3,000 of them were Russian citizens. In the late Qajar era, 3,300 Russians worked on roads and railroads in northern Iran. The number of Iranians who worked in tsarist Russia was even more impressive (see Table 2.2); official records for 1905 show 62,000 Iranians working in Russia. In 1913, 81,971 Persian workers were registered in the Caucasus, and undoubtedly many more were not registered. The oilfields in the Caucasus needed their inexpensive labor; in the first decade of the twentieth century, 50 percent of the oil workers in Baku were Iranians, mostly Azeris, who shared a common language with the local population. The 1920-1921 census recorded 41,020 Iranians living in Soviet Azerbaijan; another 159,000 Iranians worked in other parts of Soviet Russia, particularly in Turkestan. 22 Iranian literature and education throve in the Caucasus. Iranian merchants in Baku established two progressive schools for their countrymen in that city, as well as several newspapers. In Russia, tsarist as well as Soviet, Iranians were exposed to a wide array of revolutionary groups. The Social Revolutionaries, the Armenian Dashnaks, and, most importantly, the Social Democratic Party all attracted many Iranian workers and intellectuals. The Social Democratic Party of Iran was actually founded in Baku, as was the Communist Party of Iran. The worker who returned to Iran from Baku (there were 65,971 such in 1913) 23 had gained new political consciousness, which manifested itself in the creation of leftist political parties in Iran. Not only had Iranian workers been exposed to Western political ideologies, they had been released from the hierarchical, religion-centered political culture of Iran. For the first time Iranian workers organized into committees, and these committees cut across all the traditional racial and religious divisions in Iranian society. Armenians, Assyrians, and Azeris joined with Georgian workers in demonstrations and political activities. For the first time, they sensed their own power as a class. Through their life in the Caucasus, northern Iranian workers acquired radicalism and class consciousness. 24 New political ideas spread rapidly from Caucasia to northern Iran along with the flow of goods and labor. Anarchist ideology, for example, surfaced in Gilan and elsewhere during the reign of Naser al-Din Shah (1848-1896). 25 Workers returning from Russia brought with them revolutionary ideas and propaganda; Iskra, a Russian revolutionary newspaper, was sent to Iran as early as 1901. 26 By the time of Iran's Constitutional Revolution, there was a substantial radical intelligentsia in Azerbaijan and Gilan, which had derived much of its political philosophy from Russia. In southern Iran, Britain's commercial hegemony also led to cultural contact. However, since British mercantilist policy actively discouraged the development of native industry, Britain did not establish or encourage factories in the south; nor (for obvious geographical reasons) did Iranian workers migrate

THE QAJAR ERA AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

Table 2.2. Volume of Iranian Trade with Russia and Iranian Visas To Transcaucasia (Selected Years) Iranian Visas

Year

(in

Trade 1,000s of rubles) 4,707

1850 1852 1860 1870 1880 1890 1891 1892 1893 1894 1896 1897 1898 1899 1900 1901 1902 1903 190* 1905

4,852 4,857 5,965 10,973 12,679 15,615 16,488 15,906 17,373 19,939 22,861 26,355 29,735 16,627 22,776 27,570 32,866 59,121

36,392

70,530

Data is unavailable for visas and/or trade for a number of years; figures were obtained from the following sources: Fcreydoun Adamiyat, Fekre Demokrasiy Ejtemayi dar Nehzate Mashrutiate Iran [Social Democratic Trends in the Iranian Constitutional Movement] (Tehran: Payam, 1975), p. 15; Avetis Sultanzadeh, [Life and Works], in Chaqueri, ed., [Historical Documents], vol. 8, pp. 58-59; Farhang Ghassemi, Sandikalism dar Iran [Syndicalism in Iran] (Paris: Mossadegh Foundation, 1985), pp. 38-39; and Ravasani, [The Gilan Soviet Republic], p. 124. Data in Table 2.2 graphically depicted.

•

t Viso*

21

22

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

between Iran and British manufacturing centers. Hence the cultural impact of Britain was limited to the elite circle of merchants and tribal leaders with whom they had economic or political dealings, and to Armenians, among whom British missionaries were permitted to minister. Russia's mass cultural impact in the north was, therefore, not paralleled by Britain in the south.

The Emergence of Reformism Mirza Taqi Khan, also called Amir Kabir (Great Lord), prime minister of Iran from 1848 to 1851, perceived the necessity for reform in Iran's internal and foreign affairs. The son of a cook in Farahani's household in Tabriz, Taqi was attached first to the court of Abbas Mirza, then to that of his son Mohammad Mirza, and finally to the court of Naser al-Din Qater shah). As a member of diplomatic missions to Russia and the Ottoman Empire, Taqi, who spoke Russian fluently, was impressed by the contrast between European advancement and Iranian backwardness. After he became premier, he cemented his tics with the dynasty in traditional Iranian fashion by marrying the sister of Naser al-Din Shah. Realizing the danger that balancing concessions to Great Britain and Russia posed to Iran's sovereignty, Taqi adopted a new policy, which would later become known as negative equilibrium: He avoided giving any concessions in either the south or the north; forbade foreign citizens to acquire land in Iran; and limited the existing influence of Russia in the Caspian and Britain in the Persian Gulf. He removed all local governors who showed a predilection for either Britain or tsarist Russia and prevented the shah from meeting with foreign diplomats without his presence. 27 Taqi Khan also took steps to strengthen Iran from within, asserting the central government's power and establishing military posts along the trade and travel routes. These actions prompted a number of local revolts, including that of the Babists in Azerbaijan, Mazandaran, and Gilan, and anticentralist tribal revolts in Khorasan, Baluchistan, Fars, the Caspian region, and the Persian Gulf. Taqi suppressed all of these uprisings. Taqi Khan's official title was Amir Nezam (Lord of the Army), and he considered himself primarily a military man. He assumed personal control of the army, administering the provincial forces in an effort to undercut provincialism and appointing military men to serve in the provinces, rather than relying on the Qajars' traditional network of local khans. He formed a garrison in Tehran from units from all of the provinces in Iran. He also attempted to mandate uniform training and prompt payment for officers and enlisted men, taking over the finance apparatus to ensure regular pay. Taqi Khan encouraged education, both within Iran and abroad, particularly in military and industrial technology. He established the Dar al-Fonun (Polytechnic School) as a military academy. The

THE QAJAR ERA AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

23

advisors at the school came from France and Austria-Hungary, countries without traditional interests in Iran. 28 Taqi Khan established Iran's first newspaper, Vagayehe Ettefaghiye (Important Events), and laid the foundations for its first modern postal service. He encouraged public health, initiating smallpox vaccination in Tehran, and authorized the first census of Tehran. Taqi Khan emphasized the improvement of Iran's internal economy. He gave financial assistance to the peasants for producing products for domestic consumption and freed the Khuzistani and Mazandarani peasants from paying taxes, enabling them to invest in sugar production. He promoted protective tariffs and subsidies for "infant industries," especially cloth manufacture, and encouraged manufacturers to competc with European producers as well as with each other. To equip his army, he established fifteen factories, most of which were in Azerbaijan. 2 9 Taqi also balanced the national budget, integrating provincial financial affairs into a centralized administration under his own control. Impressed by contemporary Turkish administrative reforms, Taqi Khan established a Divan Khaneh (Government House) in an attempt to centralize government affairs. In political affairs, he curbcd nepotism and corruption. He placed limits on the interference of the shah's mother in the government, and (as can be seen in the above-mentioned reforms) on the financial and authoritative prerogatives of the local khans. Taqi Khan's programs, like Abbas Mirza's, were tempered with caution toward the religious establishment. In Dar al-Fonun, for example, religious ritual was imbedded in the students' daily routine. 30 In the military, in culture, and in the economy, as in foreign policy, his prime goal was national unity and self-sufficiency. While Taqi Khan's piecemeal reforms did not alter the structure of Iran's polity or economy, they did make the old structures more efficient. The shah's mother, the court, the religious establishment, and the shah himself grew fearful of his power and efficiency. In 1851, he was removed from office and assassinated. In the second half of the nineteenth century, positive equilibrium in relations with Britain and Russia paralleled an internal political equilibrium: The shah appointed his eldest son, the pro-British Masoud Mirza Zel al-Sultan, to govern Isfahan and Fars in the south, counterbalancing the presence of the proRussian crown prince, Muzaffar al-Din Mirza, in Azerbaijan. 31 Because of an escalating cycle of concessions, a cumulative trade deficit developed (see Table 2.3). A new series of alternating concessions to British and Russian citizens included, most notably, concessions to the Briton William Knox D'Arcy of the oil in southern Iran, and, during World War I, to the Georgian Akaky Medievich Khoshtaria of the oil in the northern provinces. In 1879, Naser al-Din Shah founded the Russian-officered Cossack Brigade, which became the only reliable armed unit in Iran for decades. The British responded by attaching contingents of Indian troops to their diplomatic missions. 32

24

IRAN IN T H E T W E N T I E T H C E N T U R Y

Table 2.3.

Iran's Foreign Trade, 1900-1922 (in millions of rials) Imports

Year

Exports

Deficit 108.1

1900-1901

225.4

147.3

1905-1906

386.5

293.1

93.4

1910-1911

484.5

375.4

109.1

1913-1914

647.2

455.9

191.3

1916-1917

494.8

433.9

60.9

1918-1919

476.3

270.9

205.4

1919-1920

529.0

309.0

220.0

1921-1922

609.7

179.4

430.3

Export figures from 1918-1919 onwards do not include oil revenues. Data from Sultanzadeh, in Chaqueri, [Historical Documents], vol. 8, pp. 52, 185; and Sultanzadeh, Persila [Iran] (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1924), p. 50.

D a t a in T a b l e 2.3 g r a p h i c a l l ) ' d e p l e t e d .

Import vs. Export

O

Imports

Trade Deficit(1900-1922)

4

lixpons

THE QAJAR ERA AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

25

After a tour of Europe in the late 1870s, Naser al-Din attempted to introduce Germany as a third power in Iran's political and economic relations. Otto von Bismarck's military achievements and the Prussian style of rule had made a strong impression on the Qajar shah, and Naser al-Din considered asking German firms to develop a railroad and shipping in the south. British opposition put an end to this plan. 33 Naser al-Din became the firmest ruler of the Qajar dynasty. Shaken by Tsar Alexander II's assassination, he severely restricted travel to Europe and prevented liberal political thought from being taught at Dar al-Fonun. His interest in Europe did not extend to the cultural or political spheres. Tsar Alexander Ill's autocratic style of rule reinforced Naser al-Din's determination not to delegate or share power. 34 When the shah established ministerial portfolios along the lines of those of European governments, the powers of the ministers were limited to reporting to the shah and asking him for a final decision. He played off ministries and governors against one another to prevent any one figure from challenging him. In order to strengthen the monarchy, the shah prevented the royal bureaucracy and army from acquiring strength of their own. This deliberate endeavor to preserve the weaknesses of the administration, not surprisingly, ultimately contributed to the monarchy's weakness when confronted by organized opposition in the Constitutional Revolution. 35 After the fall of Taqi Khan, reformism found no administrative outlet. Reformers did emerge, but they had little, if any, impact on the government. The most notable Iranian reformers of the latter half of the nineteenth century were Sayyid Jamal ed-Din al-Afghani and Mirza Malkum Khan. Jamal ed-Din was an extraordinary, if mysterious, reformer who helped shape the emergence of nationalism throughout the Middle East. Born in Asadabad, near Hamadan, Jamal ed-Din was educated in afayziyeh, or theological school, in Qazvin. There he was exposed to Shaikhi and Babist heterodoxy. Shaikhis, members of a Shi'ite splinter group that emerged in the 1810s, believed that God had given each generation a Perfect Shi'i or Bab (door), through whom the faithful could communicate with the Hidden (Twelfth) Imam, and who would lead the Islamic community and establish perfect religious and social justice. The Babists followed Sayyid Ali Mohammad-i Shirazi, a theologian who announced he was the Shaikhi Bab. The Bab advocated social and economic reform (including legalization of money lending and legal protection for merchants), female emancipation, and the elimination of corruption and immorality. Babism promoted an accord between religion and science and formed the ideological basis of the 1848-1850 revolt in northern Iran, including the Azerbaijani cities of Zanjan and Tabriz, where Shaikhis were strong. The revolt acquired substantial mass support in the urban areas, where the antifeudal aspects of Babist doctrine were popular. After the revolt had been bloodily suppressed, a branch of the movement under Baha'ullah, the Bab's chosen successor, disowned violence and advocated the spiritual unity

26

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

of humanity, while continuing to advocate social evolution. The followers of this creed became known as the Bahais; another branch—the Azali sect, under Baha'ullah's brother Azal—continued to advocate violence but was forced underground. 36 Shaikhism and Babism both emphasized the role of social and scientific progress in history, and the role of economics in social relationships. This concept of progress seems to have had a great impact on Jamal ed-Din. After leaving Iran (apparently as a result of a doctrinal dispute with the Shi'ite hierarchy), Jamal ed-Din traveled extensively. He went first to India— where he probably witnessed the Sepoy Rebellion in 1857—then to Afghanistan, Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, and, late in life, to France, Russia, and England. In the course of his travels, he adopted the name "al-Afghani," claiming an Afghan origin so that the clerical establishments in the Sunni countries he visited would not disparage his Shi'ite background. Wherever he went after his trip to India, Jamal ed-Din advocated political reform and the adoption of Western technology. He described as his life's aim "to arouse any one Muslim country to strength and leadership so that the Islamic community might catch up with the civilized nations of the world." 37 Jamal ed-Din was the intellectual father of the pan-Islamist movement; while he recognized the strong appeal of nationalism, he focused primarily on Islam, and the concept of the Islamic umma, or community, as the ideological basis for an anti-imperialist movement. To this end, Jamal ed-Din attempted to persuade the rulers of Iran, Turkey, and Egypt to reform their governments. When they did not heed his advice, he sought to limit the monarchs' absolute powers. The "wisest ulama," he suggested, would oversee the implementation of Islamic law and restrain the power of corrupt secular rulers. 38 In Iran, before his break with the shah, Jamal ed-Din had joined the Royal Advisory Council and urged reforms on Naser al-Din, including a national legal code. The shah, fearful of the limitations that such rationalization of authority would place on royal power, exiled him. Later, Jamal ed-Din returned to Iran and preached revolutionary ideas in a shrine near Tehran; he particularly criticized the shah's profligacy 39 and even advocated assassinating Naser al-Din. In London in 1891, Jamal ed-Din stayed with Mirza Malkum Khan, and the two began an effective literary collaboration. Malkum Khan was the son of a wealthy, reformist Armenian merchant in Isfahan who had been influenced by Taqi Khan's programs; Malkum Khan had converted to Islam. He was educated in France, where he became an enthusiastic proponent of Western scientific and political concepts. He taught engineering and geography at Dar al-Fonun and founded the House of Oblivion, patterned after the Masons, in Tehran. As an advisor to the shah, he had promoted the sale of state land to the peasants. The reforms he urged on the shah, his Freemason connections, his proposal of a state lottery, and his Armenian parentage annoyed the ulama, who arranged that he be sent out of the country, as ambassador to England. After 1889, Malkum Khan broke completely with the shah. 40

THE QAJAR ERA AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

27

While in London, Malkum Khan wrote a book, Politik-i Iran (Iran's Politics), in which he advocated restraints on the shah's power and a constitution that would specify the differentiation of authority. He suggested a civil law code to encourage economic and cultural progress. Together with Jamal ed-Din, Malkum Khan published the newspaper Qanun (Law), a word the shah abhorred. This publication blended Jamal ed-Din's pan-Islamism with Malkum Khan's constitutionalism, and proposed that the mujtaheds, or religious scholars, lead the masses from the mosques and create a national parliament, retaining the monarchy: T h e ulama should m o v e the m a s s e s so that they w i l l r e m o v e the corrupted authorities. H o w e v e r , the monarch's position should be kept. should . . . T h e educated, the well-versed, the leaders, and the mujtaheds c o m e from all provinces to establish the great national parliament. 4 1

Jamal ed-Din, meanwhile, retained contact with the Shi'itc hierarchy in Iran. Friction between the clergy and the shah had already been created when the shah had appointed his son-in-law as the imam jomeh, or Friday prayer leader, in Tehran. The public had refused to recognize the religious authority of the shah's appointee and continued to acknowledge the clergy appointed by the ayatollahs.n Jamal ed-Din skillfully exploited this rift: In 1891, he wrote letters to the ulama, notably the grand ayatollah in Mesopotamia, urging them to denounce the shah's concessions to foreign powers. The recent concession to a British company of exclusive rights to sell and export tobacco became, with Jamal ed-Din's persuasion, the occasion for afatwa, or religious proclamation, by the grand ayatollah, which aroused mass opposition to the concession. Tobacco was boycotted throughout the country, from the shah's harem to the remotest villages. The ulama clearly had power and communication abilities that the shah lacked. Azerbaijan (notably Tabriz, where many merchants were hurt by the concession) was strongly in favor of this boycott. 43 The shah soon bowed to pressure and cancelled the concession. The power of religion as a force to mobilize antiforeign sentiment among the masses was clearly evident in this episode. Curzon observed: [In] Persia, at any time of public disorder, a strong reaction might be set o n f o o t by the retrograde and priestly party. . . . Already there is a w i d e s p r e a d f e e l i n g o f d i s c o n t e n t at the p o l i c y o f c o n c e s s i o n s to foreigners upon w h i c h the Shah has latterly been persuaded to embark, and the recent s u c c e s s f u l outbreak against the T o b a c c o Corporation has stimulated a m o v e m e n t w h i c h a stronger G o v e r n m e n t might e a s i l y have repressed. Mollahs h a v e publicly preached against the E u r o p e a n s . 4 4

After the tobacco boycott, public discontent with the administration remained high. Even within the shah's own closed political elite, the British

28

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

minister noted serious complaints about the lack of security and justice in the country. The minister predicted that a popular uprising was imminent if the shah did not implement drastic social and political reforms. 45 In 1896, Naser al-Din Shah was assassinated by Mirza Reza Kermani, a follower of Jamal ed-Din who was also influenced by Russian nihilism. 46 Naser al-Din's son, Muzaffar al-Din (ruled 1896-1906), was a weaker leader, and the monarchy's role in the nation was reduced. Whereas under a strong person, the monarchy was (relatively) strong, under a weak person, it was weak indeed. Under Muzaffar al-Din, the concessions race between Britain and Russia accelerated, financing the monarch's trips to Europe. Meanwhile, reformism, less constrained than under Naser al-Din, came into the open. A variety of reformist organizations emerged in the early twentieth century. Initially, most of them were concerned primarily with education. Reformist leaders—including the progressive mullah Hajji Mirza Nasrollah Malek alMotakellamin ("king of the orators") in Tehran, and Mirza Mohammad Ali Khan Tarbiyat ("Education") in Tabriz—founded educational journals, societies, schools, and libraries. Some of the new schools, including one established by Hajji Mirza Yahya Dowlatabadi, an agriculturalist and merchant from a clerical family (later a founder of the Moderate Party), were religiously oriented. Others, including one established by Mirza Hassan Roshdiye, a Caucasian Azeri school administrator, were more secular.47 Various political organizations grew out of the educational societies. The Revolutionary Committee, established in Tehran in 1904 by a group of intellectuals led by al-Motakellamin, called for a secular government and the establishment of religious toleration. The committee's leaders included Dowlatabadi, the secularist preacher Jamal al-Din Isfahani and the Iskandari brothers, Yahya Mirza and Suleiman Mirza. The Iskandari family, a line of Qajar princes exposed to Western political philosophy, were to play a major role in the history of the Iranian left. 48 Another reformist society, the Secret Society, founded in Tehran in 1905, drew its members not from the Westernized intelligentsia but from the traditional, religious middle class. The mullah Nazem al-Islam Kermani, the future historian of the Constitutional Revolution, was a founding member. Other members included the ayatollahs Sayyid Abdullah Behbehani and Sayyid Mohammad Tabatabai, chief religious leaders in Tehran, both of whom were to use their considerable influence in the bazaar to become key figures in the Constitutional Revolution and the following era. The society's demands included a national code of justice, a "house of justice" to unify the legal code and its implementation, an equitable tax structure throughout Iran, the enhancement of the internal economy and educational system, and implementation of religious law. 49 The strong challenge to British rule in the Boer War, and the subsequent victory of Japan in the Russo-Japanese War of 1905, sparked great intellectual

THE QAJAR ERA AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

29

and political excitement in Iran. The idea that a recently backward country could win a confrontation with a much larger and better-established European nation had obvious appeal. Iranian literature abounded with praise for Japan's strong, centralized government, its powerful military, and its constitutional framework. A striking feature of this literature is its emphasis on the leaders of Transvaal and Japan as the symbols of their countries' achievements. Years later, the constitutional movement would find its own symbol—in the person of Colonel Reza Khan of the Cossack Brigade. 50 The Constitutional Revolution in Russia in 1905, itself largely a reaction to the Russo-Japanese War, had an even greater impact: Russian political events and ideas spread rapidly into Iran. "Bloody Sunday," in which the Russian clergy had helped mobilize the masses, was publicized, and the mullahs were exhorted to follow the example of the Russian Father Gapon and become vehicles for social progress. Literature on the overthrow of the French monarchy was disseminated; Danton and Robespierre became symbols of successful revolution. Nihilist and other radical literature was translated and widely circulated. 51 A distinctive feature of the post-1905 era was the number of newspapers and magazines, most of which had some political or social content, which sprang up throughout the country: Over 150 published in Tehran; fifty in Tabriz; and about fifteen in Gilan. The northern provinces, including Tehran, had the vast majority of publications; the Tabrizi journals were often the most supportive of the Constitutional Revolution. Ali Akbar Saberi Tabrizi, a leading Azeri poet, wrote inspirational verses on the necessity for a constitution; this inspirational Azeri literature, in turn, influenced Persian writers. 52 The linguistic and cultural affinity among Azerbaijan, Turkey, and the Caucasus made Azerbaijan a focal point for the absorption of Western political and literary influence. Political ferment in Turkey and Russia prompted the development of Azeri political literature. Constitutionalist journals throughout the country were influenced by a socialist Azeri newspaper—called Mullah Nasr al-Din after a humorous figure in Iranian folk legend—and published in the Caucasus from 1906 to 1931; it was antifeudal and very anticlerical, opposing pan-Islamism as well as panTurkism. 53 Abdulrahim Talebof-i Tabrizi was an outstanding example of the effects of Russian political ferment and the rise of Japan on Iranian intellectuals in the early twentieth century. The son of an Azerbaijani merchant, Talebof wrote of Taqi Khan and his reforms in glowing terms. Talebof exemplified the secularism of Azerbaijani intellectuals: He spent time in Caucasia, particularly Tbilisi, where Russia's progress made a considerable impression on him; he studied philosophy and modern sciences and acquired a very materialistic world view. Like other Iranians writing after 1905, Talebof was deeply impressed also by Japan's emergence as a world power. He attributed Japan's rise to its constitution, which provided the nation with a strong centralized government. Strong rulers such as the emperor, according to Talebof, were essential in

30

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Oriental countries. Dawning nationalism in the East could free the Eastern countries from Western exploitation. 5 4 His works criticized Iran's government's economic and political weakness, which had contributed to its economic dependency and political impotence; 5 5 he stressed the need for a strong central g o v e r n m e n t with a strong administration and army: "Iran must be one indivisible country, one nation, with one unified religion." 56 Such a government should support a balanced budget and the development of internal industry. European science and industry, according to Talcbof, had to be adapted to Iran's conditions. The rule of absolute monarchy, he maintained, should be replaced by the rule of law. Secularized by his Russian sojourn, Talebof saw the ulama as a reactionary social force. Islamic law, as he saw it, was irrelevant to m o d e m society. The first Iranian to be heavily influenced by socialism, Talebof, unlike other turn-of-the-century reformers, advocated a radical transformation of the social structure; the government, he maintained, had a duty to intervene in the economy to narrow the gap between the classes. He proposed eliminating the entire feudal system by a radical, state-directed land reform, which would redistribute the land to the peasants. 5 7 T a l e b o f s writings (all of which were in Farsi, not Azeri) were widely read by Iranian workers in the Caucasus, and across the border in Azerbaijan.

The Constitutional Revolution In the course of Iran's Constitutional Revolution, the intricate web of foreign and domestic politics that has formed so much of Iran's twentieth-century history emerged. The revolution had extensive roots and repercussions in both international and internal affairs; its roots in global politics are relatively easy to discern. M u z a f f a r al-Din's foreign policy was more pro-Russian than was his father's, and his reliance on the Romanovs for loans alarmed the British. In an effort to weaken Russian influence in Iran, Britain gave financial and political support to anti-Qajar, reformist clerics. 58 The domestic political and social factors in the Constitutional Revolution are more complex. In summation, it might be said that the revolution was made primarily by the traditional, bazaari middle class, but that other classes had a decisive influence on its course. The bazaaris, closely allied with the clergy, had, as noted above, considerable cause to desire reform. During the RussoJapanese War, the price of sugar rose dramatically, prompting the court-affiliated governor of Tehran to attempt to enforce price controls; some bazaaris were physically punished. The government's attempt to limit the bazaar's economic power added to a long string of grievances, 5 9 galvanizing the traditional middle class into the most influential class in the First M a j l i s , and in the Constitutional Revolution as a whole. (See Table 2.4 on the composition of the

THE QAJAR ERA AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

31

First Majlis.) Because of the bazaaris' ties to the clergy, their influence was decisive. The upper and lower classes were generally more conservative than the middle classes; at the beginning of the revolution both of the former groups were resolutely opposed to the constitution. As Mohammad Taqi Bahar explained: In the b e g i n n i n g of the Constitutional era, there were t w o groups in Iran: mashrutikah and mostabed ["constitutionalists" and "anticonstitutionalists"]. . . . T h e first class, the aristocrats, and the third c l a s s , the m a s s e s , w e r e the mostabeds; t h e y c a l l e d the constitutionalists "antireligious heretics and anarchists." The constitutionalists, smaller in number, but educated and intellectual, were from the s e c o n d class, the middle class. T h e y called the mostabeds "ignorant oppressors, reactionaries, and exploiters." So the minority of the p e o p l e w e r e progressive and revolutionary, and the majority were reactionaries; but s i n c e s o m e of the major ulama a l s o supported the Constitutional R e v o l u t i o n . . . the p r o g r e s s i v e f o r c e s o v e r c a m e the reactionary f o r c e s . 6 0

Thus, the lower classes, originally aligned with the antirevolutionary upper classes, were often mobilized by proconstitutional clerics to support the revolution. A series of riots and strikes initiated by the clcrgy (with, as noted above, British financial and political support) erupted in 1905-1906. The most important strike, in the summer of 1906, involved the clergy, theology students, and almost all bazaari guilds. All were united in this strike; a committee of bazaari guild elders raised money from wealthy merchants to support the poorer strikers, and students from Dar al-Fonun gave lectures on the advantages of a republican form of government. 61 The strikers took refuge in the grounds of the British Embassy, paralyzing Iran's judicial and commercial affairs. They demanded the establishment of a "house of justice" (Adalat Khaneh); as the movement gained momentum, the secular reformers demanded a constitution and parliament. Muzaffar al-Din was forced to grant these demands. The constitution, written hurriedly by European-educated courtiers on the model of the Belgian constitution, limited the shah's powers and provided for a national majlis, or parliament, to conduct the country's affairs. The cabinet ministers were to answer to the parliament, not to the shah; the shah had no power to dissolve the parliament. The constitution made Farsi the official language for national and provincial administration, and Shi'i Islam the official religion. It barred religious minorities from holding ministerial posts and (initially) parliamentary seats and declared private property inviolable. The constitution included the important Article 24, designed to give the Majlis control over the nation's resources. This article stipulated that all concessions or

32

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

agreements involving foreign citizens or powers be ratified by the Majlis. Written as a reaction to the concession-granting era that had resulted in Iran's economic and political degradation, Article 24 became a major factor in Iran's foreign relations in subsequent years. 62 Election to parliament was indirect, through local anjomans, or councils; the electoral laws were class-oriented and heavily weighted in favor of Tehran. Deputies had to belong to one of seven class groupings: Qajar princes, the nobility, the ulama, bazaari merchants, guildsmen, landowners, or farmeragriculturalists; and had to meet a property requirement. They had to speak, read, and write Farsi fluently. (This stipulation discriminated against candidates from Azerbaijan.) Tehran was assigned sixty seats; populous Khorasan and Azerbaijan received only twelve apiece. The distribution clearly disproportionately favored the capital. 63 Furthermore, the Majlis was permitted to convene as soon as the elections in Tehran were completed, without waiting for the provincial deputies to be elected or seated. These elitist and Tehran-centric electoral laws were important in later Iranian political crises. The constitution also provided for the convocation of a senate, or house of ayan (nobles). This upper house, half of whose members were to be appointed by the shah, would have increased aristocratic and royal influence in the government; the Social Democrats prevented its establishment in this era. 64 The constitution also stipulated that the prime minister and his cabinet had to be approved by the Majlis but did not specify whether the crown or the Majlis would actually appoint the premier. In the early years of the constitution, the general practice was for the Majlis to suggest its preference; the shah would then appoint the preferred candidate. Iranian shahs later reversed this procedure whenever they felt strong enough, or threatened enough, to do so. Freemasons in the court helped persuade Muzaffar al-Din Shah to sign the new constitution. Ahmad Qavam al-Saltaneh, then the secretary of the crown prince in Tabriz, joined with other French-educated Masons in urging the shah to support the constitution. Iranian Masonry, primarily limited to aristocrats and wealthy merchants who had come into contact with British or French Masons, became a focus of moderate European-style reform. 65 The First Majlis convened in October 1906. Under pressure from the Azerbaijani delegation to the Majlis and the provincial anjoman in Tabriz, an amendment to the constitution was passed permitting provinces to run their own internal administrative and financial affairs through provincial and local assemblies. Another amendment (passed over the strong opposition of the ulama and prompted by pressure from Tabriz) recognized the equal rights of religious minorities before the law and permitted each minority token representation in the Majlis. 66 An unwritten administrative practice came into existence immediately after the constitution was amended to allow local administrative autonomy: When the central government appointed a governor to a province, he had to be approved by

THE QAJAR ERA AND T H E CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

Table 2.4.

33

Class Composition of the First Majlis

Landowners (including landowning clergy) Baiaari merchants and guildsmen Government employees Clergy(non-landowning) Employees of internal enterprises Self-employed professionals Lower classes

Members (%)

Fathers (%)

21 37 16 17 4 5 0

18 29 19 25 3 6 0

Source: Zahra Shajii, Namayandigan-i Majlis-i Shoray-i Melli Dar Distoyek Dowrey-i Ganungozari [Representatives of the National Assembly in Twenty-one Legislative Assemblies] (Tehran: Institute of Social Research, University of Tehran, 1965), pp. 176, 250.

the provincial anjoman before he could take office. The Azerbaijani anjoman initiated this practice, which spread throughout the country and remained especially strong in Azerbaijan. The Tehran government's neglect of this tradition became a grievance of Azerbaijan and other provinces after World War II.67 Anjomans had spread southward during and after the Russian Revolution of 1905; they were the Iranian counterparts of the soviets. Tabriz, with its close ties to the Caucasus, possessed the first and most radical anjoman in the country. 68 During the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, the anjomans became important political centers; Sir Percy Sykes described them as "the backbone of the Constitutional Revolution." 69 The anjomans also reflected the fragmentation in Iranian political life; most cities came to have a number of them. Some, which later evolved into guilds and trade unions, were professional associations; others were limited to certain ethnoreligious groups, such as Armenians or Zoroastrians or Jews. One, founded by the Iskandari family in Tehran (over the vehement opposition of the clergy), was for women. Another Tehrani anjoman, which became a center of political intrigues against the Constitutional Revolution, was the clergy-led Anjomane Mohammadi ( a n j o m a n of Mohammad). In Bandarlangeh on the Persian Gulf, there were Shi'ite and Sunni anjomans. The state anjoman in Rasht was the first to permit multireligious membership; it announced that Armenians, Jews, and members of other religious minorities had the same rights as other Iranians. In Tehran alone, there were 140 anjomans during the Constitutional Revolution, including the Anjoman-i Qajariyeh for Qajar princes, which supported the shah against the constitutionalists. The proconstitutional Tehran anjomans were coordinated by the Komiteh Engilabeh Melli (National Revolutionary Committee). 70 The Rasht and Enzeli branches of the Social Democratic Party established a peasants' anjoman, the Abbasi Anjoman, which organized the peasants to refuse to pay the landlord's share of the harvest and even to expel the landlords. In one small area of Gilan, the peasants, on their own initiative, carried the endeavor

34

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

further and elected a minor member of a guild anjoman as their "king." He led the peasants in a revolt similar to those in medieval Europe, in which peasants had confiscated landlords' property. 71 In reaction, the Gilani landlords created the Anjoman-i Mallakin (landlords' anjoman), which appealed to constitutionalist mullahs in the parliament to stop the insurgency; Tabatabai instructed the peasants to observe Islamic law by paying the landlords immediately. The revolt was subdued by a combination of religious opposition, state repression, and the Rasht Social Democrats' fear of tsarist intervention. 72 In Tabriz, there were both religious and secular anjomans. The religious anjomans included the Anjoman-i Islamiyeh (Islamic anjoman), and, closely linked to it, the Fotovat Anjoman ( a n j o m a n of generosity), composed of landowners who supported Crown Prince Mohammad Ali Mirza. The most prominent secular anjoman was the Anjomane Eyalatiye Azerbaijan, the state of Azerbaijan. The latter, as seen from its influence on the anjoman development of the Constitutional Revolution, was the strongest in Iran; its members were predominantly merchants and artisans from the city's bazaar. 73 The anjomans' power alarmed the Majlis as well as the shah, since neither favored provincial autonomy. The Azerbaijani state anjoman had assumed many governmental powers when Mohammad Ali was still the crown prince in Tabriz; it established a modern police force and a secular judicial system based on European models, controlled the prices of staple products, and confiscated and redistributed speculators' property. It expelled promonarchist mullahs, and formed armed guards called mojaheds—"Fighters of the Holy Cause"—and fedayis—" Sacrifices of the Holy Cause"—to protect the city from the crown prince's anticonstitutional allies. (These appellations were shared by the armed volunteers of the Iranian Social Democratic Party, which effectively controlled the anjoman.) The mojaheds and fedayis were workers, poor city-dwellers, petty bourgeoisie, and a few peasants. 74 An offshoot of the Russian Social Democratic Party founded in Baku in 1904 came to have great impact on the development of the Constitutional Revolution: Hemmat (Power), was a multiracial social-democratic Moslem association founded by Nariman Narimanov, an Azeri physician and playwright of Iranian descent. 75 Hemmat later became a branch of the Russian Bolshevik Party. In the meantime, it was the forerunner of another organization Narimanov founded in Baku in 1904, designed more specifically for Iranians. This was the Jamiyate Ejtema'iyun Amiyun, or Social Democratic Party of Iran (SDP-I; literally Socialist People's Party). 76 The founders of the SDP-I were Iranian émigrés who had been active in the Russian Social Democratic Party, which had carried on extensive political propaganda and education among these workers. Joseph Stalin himself had played a vital organizational role; the Azeri Caucasian Bolshevik M. Azizbekov, with Narimanov, had helped. Under the direction of Stalin and in association with the Baku Social Democrats, Iranians participated extensively in labor

THE QAJAR ERA AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

35

strikes in Armenia and Transcaucasia in the Russian Revolution of 19051906. 77 The founding members of the SDP-I viewed economics as the basis of society; the party declared itself to be the "party of toilers and peasants." 78 Like that of Social Democrats elsewhere, the SDP-I organizational structure was based on democratic centralism and parliamentary participation. The Social Democratic Party's platform included a strong central government, a national army, the separation of politics and religion, measures to improve Iran's internal economy, and compulsory education for all, including females. The platform stated that all Iranians, regardless of religious, ethnic, or national origin, had equal political rights, including the right to strike. 79 The SDP-I's emphasis on centralization explains why all the organization's publications, including those in Azerbaijan, Gilan, and Khorasan, were written in standard Farsi. The issue of a centralized government, with the implied diminution of local autonomy, persisted (as did the issue of centralized organization) in the Persian Communist Party and the Tudeh, and would affect the National Front and its policies. 80 Narimanov sent Haydar Khan Amu Oglu, an Azeri engineer who had become a friend of Stalin in Caucasia, to Iran to establish a party network. Haydar's initial efforts in the province of Khorasan came to nothing—the religious establishment condemned his electrical innovations in Imam Reza's shrine as heretical—but his subsequent endeavors in Tehran were more successful. 81 The spread of anjomans facilitated Haydar Khan's establishment of the first nucleus of the SDP-I in the Azerbaijani anjoman in Tehran (to be followed soon after by cells in Tabriz, Rasht, Enzeli, and Mashad) with the assistance of Sayyid Hassan Taqizadeh, an influential leader in the Azerbaijani anjoman. Taqizadeh was an Azeri intellectual with a Tabrizi clerical bazaari background who had pursued Shaikhi philosophy, and who was associated with Tarbiyat's group. He became a leader in the National Revolutionary Committee and the party leader in the First and Second Majlis. Other figures who later enjoyed considerable prominence emerged in the SDP-I during the Constitutional Revolution. Sayyid Mohammad Shabistari of Azerbaijan was the proprietor of the newspaper Iran-i Now (New Iran), the SDPI organ in Tehran. His family was heavily involved in the leftist press up to the time of the Azerbaijan revolution of 1945-1946. 82 The writer Mohammad Taqi Bahar led the SDP-I in the holy city of Mashad—where the party faced strong opposition from the clergy from its inception—and edited its paper there. 83 The party in Gilan was headed by Hussein Jowdat, later a participant in the Gilan revolution. Azeris retained their influence over the SDP-I. Over half of the original central committee members, including its head, the Tabrizi writer Mahmoud Mahmoud, were Azeris. 84 The most influential branch of the SDP-I was that in Tabriz; its executive committee was called the Markaze Gaybi, or "secret center." Haj Ali Karbala-yi, an Azeri merchant nicknamed Monsieur ("Musio" in

36

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Persian) for his interest in the history of the French Revolution, headed the center. The other eleven members were, like Karbala-yi, Iranian merchants who had spent time in Russia. The center controlled the state anjoman of Azerbaijan in Tabriz by having its representatives in the anjoman. The party's Firsi newspaper in Tabriz, called Shaffaq (Twilight), was the most volatile of all the S DP-1 publications. 85 Following the tradition of the Russian Social Democrats, the SDP-I endeavored to attract workers by demonstrating the value of collective action. Under the party's leadership, the Tehran printers' anjoman transformed into a trade union in 1906. This trade union published the Ettefaq-i Kargaran (Workers' Unity), which covered, among other things, European strikes. In 1910, under Social Democratic leadership, the printers waged a successful strike for higher wages and better working conditions. The customs, post, and telegraph workers of Tabriz, probably also under Social Democratic influence, conducted a simultaneous strike in solidarity. 86 Thus, the SDP-I began the labor movement in Iran. The Moderate Party, the Etedaliyun Amiyun (literally the People's Moderate Party), had a more conservative ideology. It was headed by Dowlatabadi and ayatollahs Behbehani and Tabatabai; its membership included landowners, bazaaris, religious figures, and tribal leaders from throughout the country. Whereas the anjomans that had evolved into trade unions joined the Social Democrats, the anjomans that had become bazaari guilds supported the Moderates. 87 The Moderates' platform was a reaction to that of the Social Democrats. It attacked the Social Democrats for their antireligious views and supported religion, private property, and a reformist constitutional government. 88 Within a few years, the Moderate Party developed two distinct wings. One, headed by Ayatollah Sayyid Hassan Mudarres, was more religious and conservative. The other, led by Dowlatabadi and Mirza Ali Akbar Khan Dehkoda, a leading authority on Iranian prose from the predominantly Azerispeaking city of Qazvin, was more liberal and more secular. Dehkoda, who had studied the works of the French Socialist Jean Jaurès, co-edited the radical anticlerical newspaper Sur-i Israfil (Gabriel's Trumpet), with the Azeri Mirza Qasim Khan. 89 Sur-i Israfil showed the influence of Malkum Khan in its more serious portions, and, in its satire, that of Mullah Nasr al-Din.90

The Struggle of Religious and Secular Forces The First Majlis attempted to pass legislation to create a strong army, balance the budget, and curb the power of the shah. When Muzaffar al-Din died in January 1907, the last became the paramount issue, as the new shah, Mohammad Ali, was extremely reluctant to relinquish control over the army and the royal purse.

THE QAJAR ERA AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

37

The First Majlis wrote a secular judicial code, which combined French legal concepts with traditional Islamic law. It was passed over the vehement opposition of the clergy in the Majlis and was never truly implemented. The clergy, which drew much of its livelihood and social power from its monopoly over the judiciary, was threatened by this legislation. While liberals in the First Majlis could overcome clerical opposition within the confines of the parliament, they could not overcome it in society at large; the masses and the bazaaris continued to turn to the clergy for legal matters. The clergy in the Majlis particularly criticized the "radical" activities of the Tabriz anjoman.91 Mohammad Ali Shah used the religious versus secular confrontation in the Majlis to his own advantage. A very religious person, he soon drew many clergymen—the most prominent among them Sheikh Fazlollah Nuri—away from the constitutional program. The clergy, however, was far from monolithic in its political stance. Behbehani and Tabatabai continued to support the constitution. The intellectual debate on the constitution among the clergy in this period, particularly about the validity of decisions produced by secular assemblies, produced a fascinating literature. Ayatollah Mohammad Hussein Na'ini, a student of the Ayatollah Shirazi who had instigated the tobacco boycott, declared that constitutional government was the best form of rule in the absence of the Hidden (Twelfth) Imam; Na'ini stated that the government should benefit the masses. 92 The secularism increasingly evident among constitutionalists, particularly in the Social Democrat-influenced northern anjomans, threatened the religious establishment: A group of clergymen responded to Na'ini that Shi'ite law precluded government by secular consultation (it conflicted with Shi'ite theological principles) and that constitutional government was a Westerninspired heresy. Many clerics attacked the Azerbaijani delegation. Talebof, who had been elected in absentia by the Tabriz merchant anjoman, was a particular target of the conservative mullahs, who described his writings as heretical and Babist. The strong opposition of the ulama (even proconstitutional ulama) dissuaded Talebof from assuming his seat in the Majlis. 9 3 The more conservative ulama supported Mohammad Ali Shah in his efforts to control the war ministry, to which he had appointed his uncle (and father-in-law) as head. The shah insisted that the ministers report to him, instead of the parliament, and implement his orders. The shah replaced liberal Prime Minister Mushir al-Dowleh with Amin alSoltan Atabak-i Azam, an archconservative. Amin al-Soltan had been prime minister for more than a decade under Naser al-Din Shah, and for a few years under Muzaffar al-Din. He was known for his belief in a strong, autocratic government. Constitutionalists resented him for having arranged many concessions to European powers, including the tobacco concession in 1891 and, more recently, the D'Arcy concession. In a recent visit to Japan, Amin al-Soltan had come to the conclusion that reforms were necessary, and that only an

38

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

autocratic government could implement them. Unlike many members of Iran's intelligentsia, Amin al-Soltan understood that Japan's autocratic government, not its constitution, was responsible for its emergence as a power. Amin al-Soltan's arrival in Enzeli on a tsarist gunboat met with hostility from the port city's anjoman, and a cool reception in Tehran's parliament. The shah had appointed him without consulting the Majlis, and he never succeeded in gaining a vote of confidence. 94 He attempted to obtain loans from both Britain and Russia for the monarch's personal use, again without consulting the Majlis. Since the collateral for a loan to Russia would be (as it traditionally was) part of the resources of northern Iran, especially Azerbaijan, the province's state anjoman and the Azerbaijani delegation in the Majlis opposed Amin alSoltan and his premiership. Amin al-Soltan soon decided to suppress the constitutional movement in Azerbaijan. He ordered the provincial governor (already approved by the local anjoman) to take firmer measures against the constitutionalists. In Tehran, he supported Fazlollah Nuri, and his concept of mashru'e, or religious government, against the secularists. The Social Democrats were alarmed by Amin al-Soltan's actions. A Tabrizi fedayi of the Social Democrat-dominated Azerbaijani anjoman in Tehran, under Haydar Khan's direction, assassinated him. Amin al-Soltan's elimination denuded the shah of any cloak of constitutional rule, placing him in an open role as a mortal enemy of the constitution. Haydar proclaimed that the shah himself should be eliminated, in order to "awaken the masses." An unsuccessful attempt to assassinate the shah, also engineered by Haydar, did radicalize the liberal intelligentsia against the shah; however, mass support for the Social Democrats or the constitutional movement was not forthcoming. 95 The international situation had altered to oppose the constitutionalists, if not necessarily to favor the shah. Germany's emergence as a world power, and the volatility of radical ideas in northern Iran that threatened to spread to India, had combined to persuade Britain that a compromise with Russia on Iran was necessary. Hence Britain proposed the infamous 1907 treaty. This treaty divided Iran into two spheres of influence, with Russia enjoying hegemony in the north and Britain in the south (neutral areas lay in between). The Russian minister of foreign affairs, A. P. Izvolsky, saw the Britishproposed treaty as an attempt to "enlist the support of Russia as a gendarme to help preserve order among Asian peoples," and to prevent the German fleet's appearance "on the shores of the Persian Gulf' as a result of the spread of constitutional ideas. 96 British foreign minister, Sir Edward Grey—the treaty's architect—explained that as a result of the agreement, "we are freed from an anxiety that had often preoccupied British governments; a frequent source of friction and a possible cause of war removed." 97 The tsar was willing to compromise after the humiliating defeat in the war with Japan and the subsequent tumult of the 1905 Russian Revolution. The 1907 treaty became a blueprint for British policy: This was not the last

THE QAJAR ERA AND THE CONSTITUTIONAL REVOLUTION

39

time that Britain would attempt to reach an understanding with Russia to maintain its interests in southern Iran. The theme of a rising Germany prompting a closer relationship between Britain and Russia would recur. After the 1907 treaty, British support for the constitution vanished; Russian opposition to the constitutionalists became virulent. 98 The shah determined that the new international situation was in his favor. He appealed to the religious authorities who had supported him, notably Ayatollah Nuri, to arouse the urban poor and the rural masses against the revolution. The ayatollah denounced the constitutionalists in his writings, fatwas and sermons; Nuri and his clerical followers condemned the revolutionaries as "Babis" and heretics. The effect of such propaganda among the highly religious lower classes in urban as well as rural areas was immense, even in Azerbaijan." The shah tried to stage a counterrevolutionary coup d'état in December 1907; an attempt thwarted by the strong opposition of a network of revolutionary anjomans. After the shah sent an ultimatum to the parliament demanding that certain writers and speakers who had taken asylum in the Majlis—including al-Motakallamin and Jahangir Khan (editor of Sur-i Israfil)— and the entire Azerbaijani delegation be surrendered to him, the anjomans demonstrated their real power. In Tehran, the proconstitutional anjomans created armed guards to defend the Parliament (the Azerbaijani anjoman of Tehran distinguished itself again in this endeavor), and the anjomans in Tabriz and Qazvin mobilized mojaheds and fedayis to march on Tehran. The shah backed down; the constitutionalists pressed lor his removal. Britain and Russia opposed the idea of deposing the shah. The Social Democrats' attempt on his life orchestrated by Haydar Khan in February 1908 helped convince the shah that his survival depended on the suppression of the constitutional movement and destroyed any possibility of compromise between the shah and the Majlis. The constitutionalists were similarly convinced that their own survival depended on the elimination of the shah. 100 In June 1908, Mohammad Ali Shah, in concert with Nuri, assembled a large number of peasants, urban poor, and luti (popular knife-wielding thugs) in Tehran to create an anticonstitutional atmosphere. The shah had deliberately stirred up racial animosities between Persians and Azeris in Tehran. On his instigation, Nuri had aggravated the traditional hostility of the Moslem community against the Christian Armenians and called the idea of religious equality "un-Islamic." On June 23, the Russian-officered Cossack Brigade bombarded the parliament, and the assembled masses helped the Cossacks round up the constitutionalists and pillage the proconstitutional anjomans, including the Azerbaijani anjoman. The crowd chanted; "We are the people of Mohammad. We are the people of the Qur'an. We don't want a constitution (mashruteh), we want religious law (mashru'eh). We want the religion of Mohammad; we don't want a constitution." Constitutionalist

40

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

anjomans throughout the country were suppressed. 101 For the time being, reaction had succeeded. While Nuri was supporting the shah, other ulama opposed his autocracy. The ulama of Najaf, then the center of the Shi'ite hierarchy, sent the shah a telegram calling him an "oppressor who is at war with the Imam-i Zaman [the Hidden Imam]." The Qur'an, the ulama declared, did not protect oppressors; "you are victorious now, but you will not be victorious for all time." The Najaf ulama subsequently enjoined the masses not to pay taxes to the oppressive monarch. 102 In Tabriz, the Islamic anjoman, openly supported by tsarist Russia, sent a telegram to the shah demanding the immediate suppression of the "heretical" Azerbaijani state anjoman and the other constitutionalists. 103 Mohammad Ali, following traditional Qajar policy, aroused the nearby Kurdish and Shahsavan tribesmen against the constitutionalist anjomans in Azerbaijan, and almost all of Tabriz was captured. The Tabriz state anjoman's revolutionary guards, under the charismatic leadership of Sattar Khan, turned the tide against these seemingly insurmountable odds. Sattar, from a peasant family, was a famous luti from the Shaikhi ward of Amirkhiz. He had already been compared in popular verse to the Azerbaijani folk hero Kur Oglu (flourished mid-1600s), because he had led a short-lived peasant movement against oppressive landlords in remote areas of Azerbaijan. He had worked briefly in the Baku oilfields, where he had associated with the Iranian socialist movement (though he never joined). On his return to Iran, Sattar had led a division of the mojaheds under the Tabriz anjoman. When Tabriz was faced with a food shortage in the early days of the Constitutional Revolution, he had led a popular march on the grain silos and distributed the grain to the public. He had a Robin Hood-like image, always protecting the lower classes from the upper classes. 104 With a fellow Shaikhi luti, Baqer Khan, Sattar Khan—described as a "Persian Pugachev" by Lenin—mobilized the remaining mojaheds and launched an attack on the Islamic anjoman, the center of royalist power in Tabriz. The city was captured in the name of the Azerbaijani state anjoman', the red flag, symbol of the state anjoman, replaced the Iranian flag over Tabriz. In a telegram to all the major cities in Iran, the Azerbaijani state anjoman declared that the mellat-i Azerbaijan, the "nation of Azerbaijan," refused to recognize the sovereignty of Mohammad Ali Shah. The state anjoman pronounced Tabriz the temporary capital of Iran, and itself the temporary Majlis. This was the first time that Azerbaijan was referred to as a nation. 105 The state anjoman took over the administration of Tabriz even more thoroughly than it had done in the days before Mohammad Ali had taken the throne. It distributed food, controlled prices, established a volunteer police force, and established ad hoc revolutionary courts. Under Haydar Khan's direction, it also sent constitutionalist propagandists to the countryside, though these missions did not have much success. 106 The most important newspaper in Tabriz in this period was called

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41

Azerbaijan; it was a bilingual (Farsi and Azeri) paper published by a mohajer Azeri friend of Sattar Khan. Satirical and proconstitutional, Azerbaijan generally reflected the views of the state anjoman and Sattar Khan. Mujahed, a Farsi newspaper, was the organ of the Social Democratic fighters in the city. Folk literature glorifying Azerbaijan's role in Iranian history pervaded revolutionary Tabriz. Azerbaijan was referred to as "the Motherland," and the virtues of the "Azeri race" were extolled. Ana Deli (Mother Tongue), an Azeri newspaper, stressed Azerbaijan's indigenous language and culture. The Azeri papers published Saberi Tabrizi's inspirational poems, which became the anthems of Tabriz. 107 The enemies of the revolution, especially landowners, were terrorized. Anjomans threatened to take the families of Azerbaijani soldiers supporting Mohammad Ali Shah hostage and to confiscate their property; wealthy Tabrizis who had supported Mohammad Ali were actually taken hostage. The Islamic anjoman and its newspaper, Mullah Amu (Uncle Mullah), were suppressed, all members of the associated Fotovat Anjoman were arrested or expelled by the state anjoman, and their property was confiscated. 108 Despite the Islamic anjoman's anticonstitutional stance, the division between constitutionalists and anticonstitutionalists was not a simple struggle between religious and secular forces. There were still clergymen who supported the constitution, though they were often critical of the Social Democrats and usually associated with the Moderate Party. The highly respected Shaikhi sect leader of Azerbaijan, Shaikholislam ("Leader of Islam"), continued to support the revolution. Proconstitutionalist clerics such as Shaikholislam, including the Social Democratic leader Shaikh Mohammad Khiabani, were essential for mass mobilization. 109 The Social Democrats, meanwhile, pursued more secular channels to expand and strengthen the antiroyalist forces. On the request of the state anjoman, the Social Democratic committee in the Caucasus sent more than 400 fighters to Tabriz to aid the constitutionalists. These Caucasian fighters, including Georgian and Russian Bolsheviks and Social Revolutionaries as well as Armenian Dashnaks, gave invaluable instruction in weapons manufacture and street-fighting. Native Iranian workers, politicized by long sojourns in the Caucasus, also infused Tabriz with militant radicalism. In correspondence with Karl Kautsky and Georgi Plekhanov, the Caucasian socialists asked whether an alliance with the bourgeois nationalists was appropriate. Kautsky advised them to align with the bourgeois democratic forces, since there was no proletariat in Iran. The Caucasian socialists apparently followed this advice. 110 In order to relieve the strong royalist pressure on Tabriz, the Social Democratic committee in the Caucasus sent Sergei Orzhonikidze and the Armenian Dashnak, Yeprom Khan, to Gilan. Gilan (especially Rasht and Enzeli) became the second center of the Constitutional Revolution. The Social Democrats, with the assistance of local constitutionalists including the Moderate

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Kuchik Khan, created a war committee, called the Sattar Committee in Sattar Khan's honor. The committee assassinated Gilan's governor as well as many anticonstitutionalist mullahs and reconvened the Gilan state anjoman. The Social Democrats in Gilan, both Iranian and Caucasian, were openly hostile to the upper classes, which alarmed even the proconstitutional landowner Sepahdari Rashti. Moderate members of the committee, including Kuchik, had no desire to change the social status quo; they tried to quell discussion of social revolution. These contrasting views on revolutionary methods would reemerge during the Gilan revolution. 111 Orzhonikidze, Yeprom, and Haydar organized a constitutional army in Gilan, strengthened by an infusion of Azerbaijani mojaheds. It marched on Tehran and converged with a Bakhtiari force from Isfahan. On July 13,1909, the two armies captured the city and removed Mohammad Ali Shah. A directorate of landowners and tribal khans, including Sepahdar from Gilan as well as Sardar Assad and other Bakhtiaris, took temporary power until Mohammad Ali's thirteen-year-old son Ahmad was placed on the throne. The Social Democrat-dominated Gilani army, meanwhile, had captured Ardabil, a mercantile center in Azerbaijani. A Caucasian Azeri Social Democrat mojahed was in charge of the detachment remaining in the conservative, religious city. He confiscated property from the wealthy and executed the mullah in charge of a holy shrine, actions that prompted the state anjoman in Tabriz to send Sattar Khan to head off a social revolution. Sattar, disturbed by the Caucasians' antireligious attitude, disarmed them and expelled them from Ardabil. 112 Revolutionary courts were established in Tehran, and Ayatollah Nuri was executed on the orders of a court headed by an Armenian socialist. This was the first time that a religious figure was executed in Shi'ite Iran. The ulama of Najaf, who had supported the constitution, approved the sentence; the court had sought their approval "to prevent the masses from revolting." 113 In the Second Majlis, which convened shortly after the capital was captured, the division between Social Democrats and Moderates widened. In order not to provoke the conservative public, the Social Democrats reconstituted their organization as the Democratic Party. 114 Democrats continued to press for the abandonment of the property qualification for election to the Majlis, for greater representation for religious minorities, and for more parliamentary seats for the provinces. The Moderates were joined by constitutionalist landowners and tribal khans, including Sepahdar and Sardar Assad, who feared the Democrats' opposition to private property. The pro-British regent, Naser al-Mulk, also joined the Moderate Party. According to Bahar, all of the important clerics joined the Moderates; the bazaaris also supported them. The division between Moderates and Democrats in the Second Majlis became so violent that the religious Moderates condemned the entire Democratic

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Party as heretical and anarchist. The Democrats in turn condemned the Moderates as ignorant social reactionaries and capitalists, recommending the "extermination of the reactionary class." The mullahs were a special target of the Democrats. 115 In 1910, Ayatollah Behbehani, a prominent pro-British Moderate Party leader, was assassinated by Haydar Khan's fedayis, under the apparent direction of the Democratic Central Committee. The Moderates assassinated the more radical members of the Democratic Party, notably Azeri fedayis, and threatened the life ofTaqizadeh. 116 When the Democrat Mustofi al-Mamalek became premier, the feud exploded. Sattar and Baqer Khan, now in Tehran, sided with the Moderates. Haydar and the Caucasian Azeris took sides with Mustofi's Democratic government. Yeprom was now head of the Tehran police; his Armenian Dashnaks sided with Haydar and his Azeri mohajers from the Caucasus. This would not be the last time that Iranian revolutionaries, including revolutionaries from Iranian Azerbaijan, were alienated by the Azeri mohajers.117 Heavy fighting in the Garden of the Atabak in Tehran in 1910 left the Moderates crushed. Despite this temporary victory, the alliance between the clergy and the bazaar soon brought down the Mustofi government. The Najaf ulama intervened in the Moderates' favor and demanded the expulsion of several Democrats, including Taqizadeh. The bazaars of Tehran and other major cities closed in support of the ulama's position, bringing the country's trade to a halt. Haydar Khan and several other mohajers left Iran in fear for their lives. The Moderate Sepahdar replaced Mustofi. 118 Political factionalism had repercussions in the foreign policy arena as well. While most members of both parties wanted to preserve and strengthen Iran's independence, their inability to act in concert prevented them from doing so. The Second Majlis pursued the third-power option. As an attempt to limit British and Russian influence in the nation's politics and economy, the Majlis hired the U.S. economist W. Morgan Shuster as treasurer-general and gave him practically unlimited powers to reform Iran's finances. Shuster created the nucleus of what would later become the Iranian gendarmes—rural security forces—to collect taxes. His zealous collection of taxes and customs duties in both north and south earned him the enmity of large landowners, tribal khans, and the shah's court, as well as Britain and Russia. In November 1911, the Russians occupied Rasht and Enzeli, delivering an ultimatum demanding Shuster's dismissal and a promise not to hire foreign advisors without British and Russian consent. This ultimatum had been suggested by the British Foreign Ministry; Britain had landed troops in the south in October. Iran's acceptance of this ultimatum would, in effect, have meant recognizing the validity of the 1907 Anglo-Russian treaty. The joint military invasion and the ultimatum heightened the friction between Democrats and Moderates. The Democrats adamantly defended Shuster. Under the leadership of Suleiman Mirza Iskandari, now secretary-general of the Democratic Party,

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defense committees throughout the northern cities actively fought the tsarist forces; Khiabani gave a defiant speech in the Majlis in which he referred to Shuster as a symbol of Iran's independence. 119 The Moderates did not vocally oppose Shuster; but neither did most of them actively support him. Many Moderate deputies, including Ayatollah Mudarres, absented themselves from the debate on the ultimatum. A number of Moderate Party members, including the Bakhtiari khans and Sepahdar from Gilan, felt threatened by Shuster's scrupulous tax collection. The Democratic Party and the Tehran Women's Anjoman urged the Majlis not to accept the ultimatum. Members of the Tehran Women's Anjoman, armed with pistols, threatened to shoot any deputy who voted in favor of it. Not surprisingly, the Parliament voted to reject the ultimatum. The regent and the prime minister, both Moderates, reacted to this rejection by closing the Majlis. Many Democrats were arrested by the regent; the party's newspapers were closed. 120 Shuster left Iran. The constitutionalists had failed to create political and economic independence—or even internal security. Internal political divisions and foreign pressure had been the major factor in the defeat of Iran's first experiment in constitutional government. By the beginning of World War I, Russia and Britain together controlled Iran. In Tabriz, the tsar's government collected taxes as payment for one of its outstanding loans to the Qajar dynasty. In the south, Britain collected customs duties for similar purposes. The failure of the constitution was conclusively demonstrated during World War I, when Russia and Britain ignored Iran's official neutrality; both powers occupied the country. 121 What did not happen in the Qajar and Constitutional eras was perhaps as important as what did: the country did not go through a capitalist stage of development, a fact that would have enormous repercussions on leftist ideology and strategy in Iran; the Majlis created in the Constitutional era was unable, because of internal divisions and foreign pressure, to administer the country. This lack of a viable government later made many groups in Iran receptive to Reza Khan's dictatorship. In addition to the ethnic, religious, and linguistic factionalism that had prevailed under the Qajars, the Constitutional era had created new factionalisms, between secular and religious forces, between reformers and supporters of the status quo; these new ideological divisions would endure. The foreign policy legacy of the Qajars, which had culminated in the 1907 treaty, made a deep impression on Iranian nationalists. Because the Qajars' policy of positive equilibrium had resulted in the de facto political and economic division of Iran between the Great Powers, the concept of negative equilibrium became a tenet of many Iranian nationalists. The third-power policy, pursued sporadically by the Qajars, was another alternative nationalists favored. Even in the late 1980s, Iran's government pursues both of these latter approaches.

3 The Impact of World War I and the Russian Revolution

Two enemies on opposite sides put a rope around a man's neck and tried to strangle him. The miserable man struggled. Suddenly, one of the two enemies dropped his end of the rope, saying, "You poor creature, I am your brother! "And the victim survived. The person who left his end of the rope was Lenin. — M . T. Bahar, speaking on behalf of the Iranian Democratic Party (late 1917)

It is the sacred duty of every faithful Moslem to oppose the foreigners and their local stooges, and endeavor to establish a republic based on the principles of socialism and Islam in all provinces of Iran and free the toilers from the exploiters. —Declaration by Kuchik Khan (1919)

Political issues raised during the years of World War I and the Russian Revolution have contributed to the development of Iranian political ideologies up to the present. Some of these issues, like equilibrium in foreign policy, were retained from the Qajar and Constitutional eras. Others, most notably the conflict between provincialism and centralism, emerged from the international turmoil surrounding World War I. The interaction of international and internal events during these years paved the way for the emergence of the Gilan Republic in 1920-1921, and later for the dictatorship of Reza Khan. After the third-power policy failed in the Shuster initiative, Iranian nationalists considered Germany as a possible third power. Iranian Democrats in particular applauded Germany's strong, centralized government, its secularism, and its social welfare programs. Germany's anti-British, antiRussian foreign policy was, of course, also an impetus to Democratic overtures. Taqizadeh moved to Berlin and established ties with the German Socialist Party. There he edited and published a Farsi newspaper called Kaveh, after a 45

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legendary Iranian blacksmith. Kaveh constantly urged Britain and Russia to leave Iran.1 German economic and political influence in Iran increased markedly in the years preceding the war. 2 It will be recalled from the previous chapter that the threat of German emergence as a power in the Middle East had helped prompt the Russo-British entente embodied in the 1907 treaty. In the early months of the war, German agents, including the famous Wassmuss, spread across southern Iran arousing popular support and disrupting British supply lines. In this endeavor, Wassmuss allied himself with the Qashqais, long-time enemies of both the pro-British Khamseh tribe and the pro-British Arabs of Khuzistan. These activities forced Britain to withdraw from several southern cities.3 While Germany carried on operations against Britain in southern Iran and developed ties with the Democrats, the Germans' Moslem ally, Turkey, worked against Russia in northern Iran and established relations with the Moderates. Prompted by the presence of tsarist troops, Turkey invaded Azerbaijan in August 1914. The people of the region were already hostile to the tsar's forces; the Turks' appeals to the Ettehad-i Islam (unity of Islam) movement won the sympathies of many members of the lower classes. 4 The Iranian government, meanwhile, had declared neutrality in the war. However, the massive presence of foreign armies made this official neutrality seem as irrelevant to Iranian statesmen as it did to the occupying powers. In 1915, the government, headed by the Democrat Mustofi, signed a sccrct treaty with Germany promising Iran's entry into the war on the German side in return for material and political assistance. In response to this treaty, Russia and Britain put military and political pressure on the government and brought about its collapse. A new, more submissive government, headed by the Moderate Sepahdar, was soon formed in its place. 5 Democrats and some Moderate leaders, notably Mudarres, formed an alternate government in Qum. The alternate government, called the Dowlate Movaqate Mohajer (Temporary Emigrant Government), signed another treaty with Germany. The emigrant government also formed a Committee for National Defense. Mudarres participated in this committee, but the Democrats, including Suleiman Iskandari, were its primary organizers.6 The German-educated Azeri Democrat Colonel Mohammad Taqi Pesyan directed the committee's armed forces. Officers were primarily middle-class Azerbaijani gendarmes who were influenced by Democratic ideology. The soldiers—peasants and tribesmen by origin—were more receptive to the religious nationalism of Mudarres and the Moderate Party. This class division compounded with ideological incompatibility, hampered the effectiveness of the army. Entente forces compelled the emigrant government to retreat to Kermanshah, where it finally collapsed. Internal difficulties between Democrats and Moderates exacerbated the external pressures. The ideological issues of the Constitutional era also plagued this short-lived government. Controversies over

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secularism versus religion helped drive the Democrats and the Moderates ever farther apart. Disputes between Suleiman Iskandari and Mudarres over secularism and religion evolved into serious personal rivalries, which would facilitate Reza Khan's rise. 7 The international scene was equally unfavorable to Iranian independence: The 1915 Constantinople Agreement between Russia and Britain recapitulated the spheres of influence delineated in the 1907 treaty and granted previously neutral zones to each of the powers; Sepahdar's Moderate government signed a treaty with Britain and Russia in June 1916 that made Iran their protectorate; Britain and Russia were empowered to create an army of 22,000 men, officered by their own citizens. This treaty, though never ratified by parliament, in effect reaffirmed the 1907 treaty. 8 Sepahdar's government also negotiated to guarantee the Russian citizen A. M. Khoshtaria an oil concession in northern Iran; the pro-British foreign minister Vossugh al-Dowleh finalized that agreement, which, like the 1916 treaty, was never ratified by the Majlis as stipulated in the constitution. 9 Immediately after the 1916 treaty was signed, Sir Percy Sykes began raising Britain's allotted 11,000 troops, a British-officered force called the South Persia Rifles. Britain now occupied (or reoccupied) all of southern Iran. 10 With the complete collapse of the Tehran government's authority, ethnic antagonisms resurfaced. Kurdish tribes clashed with one another and with Azeris and Christian Assyrians in northern Kurdistan and Azerbaijan; Azeris and Armenians had serious confrontations. The Shahsavan tribe, the traditional instrument of royal power in Azerbaijan, attacked the Azerbaijanis, who had refused to accept the authority of the governor appointed by the Tehran government. 11 The Russian Revolution of March 1917 renewed Iranian nationalists' hopes of asserting their country's sovereignty. The second Russian provisional government, headed by Alexander Kerensky, did not cancel the 1907 and 1915 treaties, but it did order the Russian troops to withdraw from Iran. These troops were already predominantly Bolshevik and had ceased to function as an occupying force, but logistical problems slowed their withdrawal. 12 The first Russian Revolution of 1917 fostered the growth of soviets and jov/ef-like entities in Iran, as the Russian Revolution of 1905 had done. In Gilan and Azerbaijan, the Russian soldiers created soviets and committees in conjunction with the local population. In Gilan, the Bolshevik Enzeli soviet, composed of local Democrats and Russian sailors, ran the port city; the Rasht soviet was less powerful than its more radical counterpart in Enzeli. In Tabriz, a local committee of Russian soldiers and Azerbaijani Social Democrats, headed by a Russian Azeri soldier, was formed to oversee the evacuation of the Russian troops. 13 The soviets in northern Iran encouraged local self-government to reemerge. In the absence of a central committee in Iran (all the old leaders were in exile or in hiding), the State Committee of the Democratic Party established itself as the State Committee of the Democratic Party in Azerbaijan. Khiabani, who had

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been a member of the state anjoman during the Constitutional Revolution, headed this state branch of the Democratic Party. As a cleric, Khiabani was able to communicate with the bazaaris and the lower classes more effectively than were most Democrats. The state committee had a long list of grievances against what remained of the Tehran government, which had been unable to protect Azerbaijan from hostile powers and Kurdish tribes during World War I, either militarily or economically. Also, Azerbaijan had been completely unrepresented in the nowdefunct Third Majlis. 14 The State Committee of the Democratic Party called for the convocation of a Majlis with Azerbaijani representation and demanded the immediate creation of local and state anjomans to run the internal affairs of the province and ensure regional security. Separatism was not the committee's intention; it proclaimed that "Azerbaijan is an inseparable part of Iran and requested the creation of a new government that would be more attentive to provincial (especially Azerbaijani) concerns and that would avoid being dominated by Britain and the southern khans." The committee urged that the proBritish Vossugh be removed from office. British domination in the south, the committee feared, would lead to preferential treatment for the southern provinces. 15 The committee's stress on local government, and its promise (and partial achievement) of internal security won it support not only from the intelligentsia, but from all ranks of the local bazaar and the ulama,16 A new Azerbaijani state anjoman was never actually created, but the Azerbaijani Committee of the Democratic Party filled the power vacuum. The committee expelled the provincial governor and rejected the credentials of two more governors sent by the Tehran government, including Vossugh's half-brother, Qavam. 17 In Kurdistan, too, there was an autonomous movement immediately after the first Russian Revolution of 1917. In Sanandaj, a group of lower-class bazaaris formed a party called Sosial Dimukrat (Social Democrat). This party, which may have been affiliated with and was certainly influenced by Democrats elsewhere in Iran, took over the city of Sanandaj and distributed grain from the warehouses of landed magnates. The Tehran government, tribal chiefs, and the religious establishment combined to suppress this short-lived movement. 18 And in Gilan, as will be discussed more fully below, the Jangal movement was already performing many of the functions of government. Jangal, the movement's newspaper, expressed optimism over the Russian Revolution's impact on Iran. 19

The Jangal Movement The Jangal movement in its early days was largely a reflection of Mirza Kuchik Khan's personality. Kuchik was the son of a Gilan administrator. His political

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socialization was largely shaped by the religious training he had received as a theology student. All sources—even the hostile L. C. Dunstervillc 20 —describe Kuchik as a sincere religious and nationalistic idealist whose goal was to free Iran from foreign intervention and corrupt government. As mentioned in Chapter 2, Kuchik was very active in the Constitutional Revolution as a member of the Moderate Party. Except for several weeks in the Caucasus, 21 he spent the years between the Constitutional Revolution and World War I in Tehran. When the war began, he returned to his native Gilan, which he hoped would form the base for a new nationalist movement. In 1915, Kuchik launched the Jangal movement, named for Gilan's jungle terrain, which sheltered the rebels. The movement was composed of merchants, peasants, small proprietors, intellectuals, and artisans with little understanding of either military strategy or international relations. The Jangalis had widespread popular support, especially among the peasants; but the Iranian historian Chosroe Chaqueri cautions that "in spite of his well-known popular support, he did not defend, at least in the beginning, the interests of the dispossessed and most exploited peasants." 2 2 This is because Kuchik was essentially a conservative, religious man. His main goals were independence and the eradication of government corruption. His Jangalis sought to use guerrilla tactics to drive foreign troops from Iran and achieve administrative autonomy for Gilan. 23 The peasantry, Kuchik's major power base, had been alienated by the central government. Provincial governors and large landowners supported by the central government had treated the peasants brutally, imposing heavy labor on them and giving nothing in return, much in the manner of landlords in medieval Europe. 24 The invasion of the tsarist troops had crystallized the national feelings of the Gilani peasants, while the machinery of the central government had completely collapsed in Gilan. Its remnants often actively cooperated with the Russian forces in extorting taxes from the peasants and forcing them into cooperation with the occupying tsarist authority. The Russians appointed local officials, including police chiefs, who were notorious for their brutality and greed. To facilitate military logistics (Russian troops used Gilan as a route to slow Turkish advances), the tsarist authorities supported a small number of powerful khans, who could help them ensure the cooperation of the local peasants. 25 From the beginning, the Jangal movement opposed all foreign intervention in Gilan and in Iran as a whole. The Jangalis' nationalism, and the protection they offered from anarchy and the depredations of foreign armies, gave them great popularity among the peasants; in order to deepen that support, Kuchik imposed a voluntary rent control, based on Islamic laws, which somewhat improved the peasants' lot. In return, the landlords were assured that they could at least collect these lowered rents. Kuchik thus preserved the social status quo by protecting the peasants and the landlords from each other and obtained the loyalty of members of both classes for his antiforeign movement. 26 Jangalis

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provided a sort of alternate government in the power vacuum that developed during the war; they had their own military and administrative apparatus, employing popular Gilanis as officials. They built schools and roads for the rural lower classes. 27 Kuchik's movement had ties to Ettehad-i Islam, the Turkish-sponsored panIslamic movement that sought to end foreign dominance of Moslem countries in the Middle East. Through Ettehad-i Islam, the Turks provided the Jangalis with weapons to fight Russian and British troops. There was an obvious community of interests; both wished to promote Islam and expel foreign powers from Iran. 28 The link with Ettehad-i Islam illustrates both Kuchik's religious outlook and his willingness to accept foreign aid against Russia and Britain. The Jangalis received the October Revolution in Russia favorably. 2 9 It refocused their energies on fighting the British, who came north in an effort to fill the vacuum left by Russian troops. M e a n w h i l e , in T e h r a n , M o h a m m a d Taqi Bahar and eighteen other Democrats had created a new central committee, which adhered to the old Democratic advocacy of a strong central government and a powerful national army. The Tehran central committee applauded the Azerbaijani Democrats' call for state anjomans, but at the same time requested that the government reassert its power by sending troops to the provinces. 3 0 The Tehran committee was the nucleus of what soon became known as the Tashkilati (organizational) faction of the Democratic Party. Tehran was the exclusive site of Tashkilati activity, organization, and publications. 3 1 Bahar summed up the Tashkilati position on provincialism: [T]he existence of a strong centralized government is much more vital than the existence of any reformist provincial movement; the latter is dangerous to the independence and territorial integrity of Iran. T h e existence of a strong, unified central government is absolutely necessary for Iran's national survival. 3 2

A succession of weak governments in Tehran prompted the Tashkilati faction to ask the Jangali leader Kuchik to march on Tehran and establish a strong centralized government. The Jangalis refused, claiming that their primary concern was local autonomy and reform. This insistent localism turned the Tashkilatis against the northern autonomous movements. 3 3 No Bahar (New Spring), the Farsi Tashkilati o r g a n Bahar edited, denounced northern provincialism: Our comrades in Azerbaijan and Jangal [Gilan] are asking for the formation of a Democrat-led government in Tehran. It is not clear whether, if such a government were formed by our party, these provinces would submit to it. . . . The Democratic Party and its branches should do their utmost to strengthen the central government. Azerbaijanis and

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Jangalis, if they are compatriots, should adhere to the decisions made by the Democrats [central committee] in Tehran, and not criticize the central government or act in a manner that weakens the central government. . . . A strong government is a mandatory prerequisite for the reforms and changes that must take place in our country. 3 4

In 1917, the Tashkilatis supported the first Vossugh government's efforts to reassert Tehran's authority over the provinces, including Gilan and Azerbaijan. 35 Another political faction, led by the Democrat Sayyid Mohammad Kamarayi, became known as the Zedde-Tashkilati, or antiorganizational, faction. This group, which included Moderates as well as Democrats, maintained that centralization was undesirable in either party organization or national government. According to the Zedde-Tashkilatis, a rigid party doctrine would not allow a plurality of ideologies to flourish; rather, it would deprive local party branches of their initiative, as had in fact happened during World War I. A centralized organization would make the party vulnerable to the personal interests of the central committee members, and to foreign powers. Local governments were the ultimate guarantors of national sovereignty. In keeping with this philosophy, the Zedde-Tashkilati group supported the autonomous movements in Azerbaijan and Gilan. 3 6 In the summer of 1917, in an international socialist meeting in Stockholm, the members of the old central committee, now in exile, supported the Tashkilati faction. Taqizadeh gave a speech calling upon the Russian and British governments to revoke the 1907 treaty and leave Iran. 37 A group of young leftist Democrats formed a third group, neither organizational nor antiorganizational. This group, called the Komiteh-i Mujazat, or Punishment Committee, was composed primarily of Azeris who had been exposed to nihilism, and who were impressed by the Bolshevik revolution. The Azeri Ehsanollah Khan-i Dustdar, "the Sincere," was a leading member in the Punishment Committee. He had been influenced by anarchism while studying in Paris and had been an officer in the emigrant government's armed forces under Pesyan. The turmoil in the emigrant government and its armed forces convinced him that no ideological reconciliation between Moderates and Democrats was possible; he had to take a third course. The Punishment Committee renounced all participation in the existing government and embarked on a program of political assassination. Most of its victims were former members of the now-defunct Moderate Party. Ehsanollah killed the important pro-British Tehran mojtahed, Ayatollah Behbehani's son-in-law Mirza Hassan-i Mojtahed, a political supporter of Vossugh. 38 The organizational-antiorganizational dispute was temporarily subdued by the end of 1918, when a Turkish occupying force disbanded the Azerbaijani state committee. The dissolution of the state committee removed a good deal of the

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initial basis for disagreement. Khiabani, the source of much of the conflict, was exiled by the Turks. He (along with the rest of the state committee) had criticized the pan-Islamism the Turks were promoting. The state committee, and the urban population in general, was unreceptive to pan-Turanism; Khiabani had ordered that all administrative and academic affairs be conducted in Farsi lest the Turks make pan-Turanism an excuse to annex Iranian Azerbaijan. Shi'ite Azerbaijanis wanted autonomy, not incorporation into a Sunni Turkish empire. 39 The British had meanwhile occupied most of Gilan, replacing the tsarist authorities with their own and aligning themselves with pro-Vossugh elements among the Gilani khans. In so doing, they turned the nationalist sentiments crystallized by Kuchik against themselves. In the summer of 1918, Kuchik's guerrillas fought Dunsterville's force on its way to Baku. The same year, the Jangalis arrested British intelligence officer Captain E. Noel, along with the British consul in Rasht, in retaliation for the arrest of Democratic Party leader Suleiman Mirza Iskandari by the British. The Jangalis later traded Noel and the consul for Iskandari. 40 This latter action illustrates the Jangalis' solidarity with other nationalist groups in Iran. The Jangalis increasingly viewed the Tehran government as a British puppet and had little sympathy for Tehran's anti-Soviet stance. Jangal's comment on the Tehran government's refusal to recognize Soviet emissary Karl Bravin was, "If the British government was willing to recognize Bravin, he would have been recognized by now." 41 In an effort to lessen the tremendous British power in Iran, Sultan Ahmad Shah covertly supported the Jangal movement. He secretly asked Kuchik to establish relations with the Soviets in the Caucasus, hoping thereby to reestablish the political equilibrium that had prevailed in Iran before World War I. The restoration of this equilibrium would have given the Qajar monarch political maneuvering room in which he could maintain his dynasty. 42 The nationalist Ayatollah Mudarres also supported the Jangalis, and the Democratic Party, too, expressed hopes that the Jangalis would improve the political situation throughout Iran. 43 The 1919 treaty, which formally sanctioned Britain's new power in Iran, increased Kuchik's hostility to the Tehran government; it threatened the livelihoods of all of his adherents. Gilani landowners, merchants, and peasants all depended on trade with Russia and would have been deprived of their income by this treaty for the foreseeable future. 44 More and more, Kuchik looked to the Soviets as potential allies against the menace that the British occupation posed to Iranian liberty and livelihood. In this atmosphere, a new coalition emerged in Gilan. The leftist Democrat Ehsanollah emerged as a political force in his own right. In the radical port city of Enzeli, he raised an armed guard of 300 men from the port workers. Ehsanollah and this fighting force were aligned with the existing Democratic Party branch in Rasht, headed by Hussein Jowdat. The alliance with these well-

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organized Democrats gave Ehsanollah more influence among the Jangalis than he might otherwise have had. 45 It is not clear when he joined the Jangalis, but his extreme plans attained some influence in the Gilani movement after the 1919 treaty. The Kurdish leader Khalu Gorban, who had led his tribesmen under the emigrant government against the entente forces in southern Kurdistan, mustered a mixed Kurdish and Luri force to Gilan. 46 Khalu Gorban's followers and Ehsanollah both disturbed local conservatives with their radicalism and racial distinctness. For the time being, though, radicalism seemed to gain momentum in Gilan. In Kasma in early 1920, the Jangali leaders (apparently excluding Kuchik) held a "congress," which adopted a nine-point socialist program. The program included a majority government elected by representatives of the people; the abolition of all discrimination based on race, religion, or aristocratic privileges and ranks; and freedom of opinion, speech, assembly, press, and labor. It asked for the equality of sexes before the law, and the "separation of religion from political and economic life." The Kasma program declared that "private property in land shall be tolerated to the extent . . . that its products shall remain in the hands of the producer himself." It demanded the replacement of indirect taxation wiih a direct, progressive tax, the creation of new factories, and mandatory 8-hour workdays. 47 The resemblance between this program and the original program of the Social Democrats, described in Chapter 2, is clear. The emphasis on racial and religious equality, for example, was an exact repetition of the 1911 Social Democratic program. 48 Some elements in the platform—for example, the racial and religious equality—were included in the first declaration of the Gilan Soviet Republic. 49 It seems unlikely that the devoutly religious Kuchik attended this congress or approved of the Kasma program; Ehsanollah wrote that "Mirza Kuchik never agreed with reducing the power of the clergy" by separating the state from the religious hierarchy. 50 Ehsanollah, for his part, wrote that his reason for joining the Jangalis was to continue the struggle he had begun in the Punishment Committee: "To propagandize the people against foreign intervention in Iran, and against capitalism, aristocracy, monarchy, and . . . the religious establishment. One of my cardinal goals was to establish a Republic." 51 This quotation illustrates the rift between secular and religious Jangalis in the movement's early stage. The Soviet landing would aggravate this division. Not surprisingly, the Vossugh government increased its pressure on the Jangalis in this period of increasing local revolts and sent troops to Gilan to put down Kuchik's forces in late 1919. The Jangalis were scattered, and even Kuchik agreed to a temporary cease-fire with the government. Most observers thought that the Jangal movement was over; but, as will be seen in the coming chapters, they were mistaken.

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The Treaty of 1919 The Bolshevik revolution in November 1917 had more far-reaching effects on Iran than had the February revolution. The Bolsheviks' revolutionary foreign policy, which unilaterally abandoned the old capitulations and unequal treaties made by the tsarist government, rejuvenated Iranian nationalism. On December 5, 1917, V. I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin (then the commissar of nationalities), published an open letter "To All the Toiling Moslems of Russia and the East" in Pravda, announcing that the treaty for the partition of Persia has been tom up and destroyed. As soon as hostilities cease, the troops will be evacuated from Persia and the Persians will be ensured the right freely to determine their own destiny. . . . It is not from Russia and her revolutionary government that your enslavement is to be expected, but from the European imperialist robbers. 5 2

B o t h o r g a n i z a t i o n a l and antiorganizational D e m o c r a t s w e l c o m e d this reaffirmation of Iranian independence. On January 14, 1918, Leon Trotsky, then the commissar for foreign affairs, repeated this message and promised that all Russian troops would withdraw from Iran as soon as possible. Trotsky added that the Soviet government would attempt to persuade the British and Turkish forces to withdraw as well. 53 Karl Bravin, the Soviets' first emissary to Iran, came to Tehran in June 1918 to pursue the new style of diplomacy initiated in the 1917 open letter. The Democrats were extremely receptive to Bravin's anti-imperialist message and provided the Soviet emissary with forums in which he explained Soviet policy toward Iran. 5 4 The Soviets' goal in this period was to prevent another power from establishing hegemony over the country. Iranian independence would prevent Iran from becoming an anti-Soviet base. T h e British, however, saw an opportunity to take advantage of the disintegration of the Russian presence to establish their own hegemony. Furthermore, the Turks had still not withdrawn from Azerbaijan in 1918, and the chaos in the Caucasus and within Iran made a Turkish invasion of the rest of the country seem probable. 5 5 For both these reasons, the British began a series of military actions in northern Iran and the Caucasus. Lionel Charles Dunsterville's "Dunsterforce" headed toward oil-rich Baku, intending to hold it against both Turks and Bolsheviks. En route, Dunsterville's forces disbanded the soviet in Enzeli and m a d e that city a base for a military assault on Soviet Russia. W h e n he reached Baku, Dunsterville helped overthrow the Soviet government there and handed the twenty-six commissars of Baku over to counterrevolutionary forces, who promptly shot them. Meanwhile, the British navy dominated the Caspian Sea. 56 The government in Tehran, under British pressure, was no friendlier to the

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Soviets. Despite Soviet offers to rescind all unfavorable treaties and concessions, Prime Minister Vossugh's government declined to recognize the legitimacy of the Soviet government or its emissaries, Bravin and V. I. Kolomiitsev. The foreign minister, Nosrat al-Dowleh Firuz, permitted the tsarist embassy to continue to function. In the autumn of 1918, Kolomiitsev was (apparently at British instigation) arrested by Iranian troops in Mazandaran and handed over to White Russian Cossacks for execution. 57 Not surprisingly, the Soviets regarded the Iranian government as an instrument of British policy against them. On August 9, 1919, Britain attempted to legalize its political hegemony over Iran by signing a treaty with Vossugh's government. The treaty was obtained through secret negotiations with Vossugh and Firuz, whose "reputation for probity," according to the British financial officer James Balfour, "could not even in Persia be described as of the highest." 58 Bribery, strongly suspected at the time, has since been substantiated. 59 Lord Curzon, the acting foreign minister while Alfred Balfour attended the Paris Peace Conference, was the principal architect of the 1919 treaty. It was part of his lifelong dream of creating a belt of British vassal states between Russia and British India. Besides providing a welcome opportunity to implement Curzon's long-term plans, the Russian Revolution seemed to British statesmen to require action to preempt the expansion of revolutionary communism. Britain would fill the military, economic, and political vacuum left by the revolution. In exchange for a large loan, Britain obtained control over Iran's army, finances, and tariffs. Britain attempted to establish a protectorate not only in Iran but in the former Russian territories in Central Asia and the Caucasus. 60 Although the treaty was never actually ratified, some of its provisions were nonetheless implemented. A mixed Iranian and British commission was formed, headed by a British officer, to create a unified national Iranian army, and British advisors were attached to the Ministry of Finance. The month after the treaty was signed, Firuz closed the Iranian embassy in Petrograd. British troops arrested all Soviet officials in Iran. 61 The Soviets denounced the treaty in the strongest possible terms. Because of the degree to which the Tehran government had fallen prey to British influence, the Soviets expressed their misgivings directly to the people. An August 28, 1919 announcement by Georgi Vasilicvich Chicherin, Soviet commissar for foreign affairs, declared: N o w that the victorious but cruel English are strangling Persia and want to bring her under their yoke, the Russian Republican S o v i e t of Labor and Peasantry m o s t emphatically declares that it will not r e c o g n i z e the A n g l o - P e r s i a n A g r e e m e n t , w h i c h w i l l lead to the slavery o f Persians. . . . T h e . . . S o v i e t . . . regards that weak agreement as a scrap of paper having no legal v a l i d i t y . 6 2

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While less alarmed than their Soviet counterparts, both U.S. and French diplomats protested that neither they, the Paris Peace C o n f e r e n c e , nor the fledgling L e a g u e of Nations had been consulted. U.S. Secretary of State Robert Lansing was angered by what he described as "a secret negotiation to obtain at least economic control" of Iran. 6 3 This was the beginning of decades of A n g l o - U . S . conflict in the Middle East. 6 4 Foreign observers and Iranians alike were shocked, not only by the signing of the treaty, but by the Vossugh cabinet's attempts to rig the Majlis election to ensure its ratification. The U.S. minister in Tehran believed that the public was constrained from demonstrating only by martial law, a controlled press, and the presence of the British army. 6 5 The 1919 treaty aggravated the temporarily dormant cleavages between the organizational and antiorganizational factions of the Democratic Party. The Tashkilatis saw the treaty as a means of obtaining their goals; in the Zedde-Tashkilati view, however, it showed how vulnerable an unrepresentative T e h r a n g o v e r n m e n t was to f o r e i g n pressure. T h e Z e d d e Tashkilatis favored strengthening ties with the Soviet Union to establish equilibrium in Iranian foreign policy and prevent the implementation of the treaty. T h e former Moderate Mossadegh joined the Zedde-Tashkilatis because of their opposition to Vossugh's one-sided foreign policy; their insistence on a weak organizational structure continued to influence Mossadegh and the formation of the National Front after the Azerbaijani crisis in 19451946. 66 The Tashkilatis assisted Vossugh's attempts to accelerate parliamentary elections, while the opposition did its utmost to prevent the convocation of a Majlis, which would undoubtedly have signed the treaty into law. This division between the two factions was so strong that the Democratic Party never recovered. 6 7 Merchants in Gilan and Azerbaijan were agitated by the treaty's implications for foreign trade and stoppage of trade with Russia, as well as by its provisions for centralization. 68 In northern Iran, still only loosely controlled by the Tehran government, opposition to the treaty was extremely vocal. In Tabriz, where Khiabani and the S t a t e C o m m i t t e e of t h e D e m o c r a t i c P a r t y ( a f f i l i a t e d w i t h t h e antiorganizationalists) had returned to effective power, the Azerbaijani Democrats received all of the province's Majlis seats in the election. Vossugh, not surprisingly, delayed convening the parliament as long as these vocal opponents to the treaty were prospective delegates. The state committee was heavily supported by the local bazaaris. The committee, which now called itself the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, did not recognize the validity of the treaty, the authority of Vossugh's government, or the desirability of centralized authority; they rejected the credentials of yet another governor Vossugh had appointed. 6 9 These events were the preliminaries to Khiabani's second revolt in 1920.

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Khiabani's Revolt in Tabriz Khiabani's earlier history will be recalled from previous chapters. During the Constitutional Revolution, Khiabani was an active member of the Democratic Party, and an outspoken and active opponent of foreign economic and political domination of Iran. After the war, Khiabani and his fellow Democrats returned to their province and established the Azerbaijani Democratic Party (Firqeh Demokrat-i Azerbaijan; ADP). The ADP made the Azeri-Persian newspaper Tajaddod (Progress), its official organ. Through this newspaper, the ADP attacked the British, especially for their harsh rule in the south, and like the Jangalis, ADP members were greatly provoked by the 1919 treaty. In April 1920, Khiabani led a revolt against Vossugh's government and seized the government bureaus in Azerbaijan. He placed a committtee called Hcyyat-i Ejtemayi (Public Commission), comprised entirely of Azerbaijani Democrats, in charge of the state machinery. The Public Commission proclaimed four goals of the seizure of power in Tabriz: to end the "predatory activities of foreign imperialists"; to "drive state officials out of Iranian Azerbaijan" and replace them with officials acceptable to the Azerbaijani population; to put the constitution into practicc; and "to fight for peace and democracy against the imperialists and the Persian reactionaries."70 The Democrats called for the summoning of provincial councils, as provided for in the constitution. Khiabani complained that Azerbaijan, despite its contributions to the Constitutional Revolution, had not received its share of either parliamentary representation or budgetary allocations.71 Khiabani sought to establish a "strong, firm democratic form of government in the country." 72 Establishment of internal stability in Azerbaijan and throughout Iran, and a renewal of trade with Russia, would enhance the economic position of Azeri merchants. The 1919 treaty, on the other hand, would give the British control of Iranian commerce and minimize the chances for renewing the Russian trade. 73 Khiabani tried to maximize his support among the urban lower classes as well as among the trade bourgeoisie. He fixed the prices of foodstuffs; he attempted to initiate an income tax that would replace all other, more inequitable taxes; and he established educational institutes for poor Tabrizis, including girls. To win over the peasants, he distributed state lands (but not private holdings) to them. 74 On June 23, 1920, Khiabani held a regional conference of the ADP in Tabriz. The numerous enthusiastic delegates at this conference decided to rename Azerbaijan "Azadistan," the "land of freedom." They formed a national government based on the Public Commission. Until a democratic Iran was created with provisions for Azerbaijani autonomy, this national government was to be considered the only legitimate Iranian government. Khiabani's actions against the central government were, however, indecisive. He explained, "We

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want [our supporters] to accustom themselves to national power gradually and without fear," 7 5 and for this reason he tried to limit armed clashes with the Tehran government. A faction of the ADP, led by the later-famous Azeri historian Ahmad Kasravi, criticized Khiabani's indecisiveness and apparent provincialism. This faction, called Tangidiyoun, or "the critics," was expelled during the congress. 76 Another faction, the left ADP, established a separate party, Hczbeh Aksariyoun (Majority Party), in an attempt to imitate the Russian Bolshevik Party. This self-proclaimed majority encouraged by the establishment of the Gilan Soviet Republic in M a y 1920, wanted to achieve Khiabani's goals through a nationwide armed revolution. As a first step, they tried to capture Tabriz from Khiabani, allying themselves with the Marxist German consul, Wustrow. Khiabani, warned by British agents, suppressed this attempted takeover. 77 Partly because of the conflict between his national reformism and the revolutionary left, Khiabani later rejected an alliance with the Gilan Soviet; Communist attempts to establish party cells in Azerbaijan also faced violent resistance from the ADP under his hand. 7 8 Khiabani's indecisive leadership and the divisions within the A D P cost his movement mass support. When the central government's forces attacked him in September 1920, only a minority of A D P members and none of the general population came to his aid. The Kurdish Shakkak tribe (led by their charismatic leader Ismail Aga Samit Ghu, known as Simko) and the Shahsavan tribe, urged on by the central government, joined in attacking the national government in Azerbaijan. This joint attack reflected both the racial animosities between Kurds and Azeris and the active conservatism of the Shahsavan. As a result of factions among leaders, the failure of Khiabani's government to attain mass support, and the racial animosities resulting from the segmentation of Iranian society, the revolt was quickly suppressed. Khiabani was killed; but, after World War II, many Azeri Democrats (some of whom had participated in this revolt) adopted his legacy as their own. 7 9

The Iranian Communist Movement in the Caucasus Iranian workers in the Caucasus were also favorably impressed by both Russian revolutions. After February 1917, a Bolshevik-oriented group of the SDP-I extended its activities in Iran and the Caucasus: In May 1917, the group's leaders, Assadullah G h a f a r Zadeh and Bahram Agayev, founded the Adalat (Justice) Party; by the time of the October revolution, almost all Iranian workers in the Caucasus were affiliated with the Bolsheviks through this association. Adalat delegates attended the Sixth Congress of the Bolshevik Party. 8 0 The radicalization of Ghafar Zadeh and Agayev through their association with R u s s i a n political ideology and organizations (such as the Social

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Democratic Party) was typical of the many Iranian workers in Baku. Like 80 percent of them in the Caucasus, Ghafar Zadeh and Agayev were Azeris. 81 Both men had gone to Baku to work around the turn of the century, and both had joined the Russian Social Democratic Party in 1904-1905. Ghafar Zadeh had even helped distribute Iskra through Iran to Russia in 1903. 82 The new Adalat Party rejected the Social Democratic Party of Iran (in the Caucasus) because of the latter's increasing support of "the reactionary rightwing bourgeoisie." Adalat, according to founding member Seyyed Ja'far Javad Zadeh, was composed of "workers from Iranian villages," whereas the SDP-I was made up of "middle class emigres." 83 Adalat was highly centralized, hierarchically organized, much like the Russian Bolshevik Party. This hierarchy, however, was not rigid; within the party framework, there was substantial room for debate on tactical matters. 84 The new party explained its outlook in June 1917 in the Baku newspaper "Our Party": "Adalat . . . promotes the interests of the peasants, the workers, and the small craftsmen. Our party strives to unite the separate groups in Iran in a strong moral union and to eliminate all political discrimination against the non-Moslem people." 85 This emphasis on religious equality helps explain the appeal that Adalat had for Armenians and Assyrians in Iran. Religious and racial equality became part of the Adalat's platform (and later of the Tudeh's); this was one factor leading many Islamic clergymen to oppose the Communist movement in Iran from its inception. In 1919-1920 Adalat began publishing Horriyat (Freedom), edited by Javad Zadeh, later known as Pishevari. His writing ability and his fluent command of Russian had made him the party's recorder and leading writer. Horriyat propagandized for workers' unity and against monarchy, aristocracy, religious authority, and British domination of Iran. (That Adalat was primarily Azeri is shown by the fact that this newspaper was published almost entirely in the Azeri language. 86 ) In the early months of 1920, a sixteen-page brochure (ten pages in Azeri; six in Farsi) described the Adalat platform: Its goals included "helping the Russian proletariat" and "strengthening the national liberation movement and the struggle against imperialism in Iran, and building a democracy in the land." 87 The brochure illustrates the extent to which Iranian Communists regarded Soviet Russia as a primary ally. The views of many Iranian Communists were, as recent Soviet historians have observed, "extremely leftist because they were fostered by a burning desire to emulate the Russian experience of socialist revolution in their native Iran." 88 In March 1920, the leading Iranian Communist theoretician, the Armenian Avetis Sultanzadeh, wrote that Iran "ought to be and will be the first country in the East to hoist the red banner of the social revolution on the ruins of the Shah's throne." 89 His Marxist political-economic analysis, relying largely on Lenin's surplus value theory, claimed that the situation in Iran at that time closely resembled that of tsarist Russia before the October revolution. While

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Sultanzadeh had considerable abilities as a Marxist theoretician, 9 0 his analyses were always colored by his enthusiasm for an immediate social revolution in Iran. Before the Soviet landing at Enzeli in May 1920, Adalat tried to establish local paity organizations in Iran, especially in Azerbaijan. The party also attempted to establish relations with Kuchik Khan in Gilan; Ghafar Zadeh, Adalat's first secretary-general, was killed by a personal enemy while on this mission, 9 1 and Pishevari succeeded him in the post. It was not until after the Soviet landing that Adalat established a short-lived united front with the Jangalis. The Jangal movement had shown itself to be a potent political force based on the support of the local peasantry and an assortment of individuals from different class and political backgrounds. It was intensely nationalistic and reformist. In general, the movement was favorable to revolutionary Russia as a potential ally against Britain. However, the Jangalis' strategy and ideology were never well defined. There was factionalism based on personal jealousies as well as on differences in political outlooks: Kuchik and the right Jangalis were national reformers, mostly m e m b e r s of the Moderate Party during the Constitutional Revolution; Ehsanollah and the Adalatis in the Caucasus were social revolutionaries who had been members of the left wing of the Democratic Party. This factionalism prevented the movement from achieving its goals of expelling the British and implementing national reform. Khiabani's movement, which had very similar goals, failed for similar (though not identical) reasons. Although progressive in its program, the Azerbaijani government was indecisive in its tactics, and divided by factions within the ADP. Khiabani failed to achieve even the level of mass support that Kuchik earned in Gilan; hence the autonomous movement in Azerbaijan was suppressed more easily. The Russian Revolution's disruption of Iran's traditional equilibrium had an immediate impact on Iranian internal politics. Not only the nationalistic intelligentsia, but Iran's politically and economically powerful bazaari and clerical classes, felt threatened by the 1919 treaty. The political issue that emerged most clearly in this period, itself an outcome of the intermingling of foreign and domestic politics, was the debate between supporters of a strong central government and supporters of local autonomy. This issue has continued to divide Iranian politicians on the right as well as the left up to the present day and will play an important role in the following chapters.

4 Internal and External Politics: Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States in Iran

The Soviet government will support the national liberation movement of Kuchik Khan against the British occupation and the British-dominated government in Tehran. . . . However, we will not support class warfare, which would weaken the national liberation movement. — L e v Mikhailovich Karakhan, deputy commissar for foreign affairs (May 23, 1920)

The goal of our republic is to reassert independence of our country, and to restore

the economic and political the honor of Islam. — K u c h i k Khan (June 4, 1920)

In the spring of 1920, White Russian forces under Denikcn retreated southward to the Caspian. Baku fell to Soviet troops in April 1920, and parts of Deniken's navy took refuge in British-occupied Enzeli. Lenin, Chicherin, and Trotsky agreed that the Whites had to be cleared from the Caspian at all costs. 1 The Caspian oilfields were the main Soviet source of petroleum; "Does not Soviet Russia need Baku oil as man needs air?" Orzhonikidze asked rhetorically.2 The Soviets naturally wanted to strengthen the region against possible British depredations. In mid-1920 the pressure from the Russian civil war eased off, enabling them to divert attention and materiel to the area. Also prompting the May 1920 landing at Enzeli was the fact that, in the wake of the 1919 treaty, the Soviets regarded Iran as a British puppet. The statesman Mehdiquli Hedayat writes that Soviet officials told him their principal goal in landing at Enzeli was to obtain the revocation of the treaty. 3 On May 9, nine days before the landing, the Soviet government sent a cable to the Iranian government stating that if the Iranians did not "make the British troops leave Iranian s o i l . . . the Soviets will be forced to land troops in Iran." 4 There were ideological as well as pragmatic considerations behind the Soviet landing. In this early, enthusiastic period of the revolution, ideology was 61

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an important factor in the Soviets' foreign relations. Marx and Engels had noted the possibility of anti-British revolt in the East, especially in India: A war of national liberation might be one means of freeing India from its English oppressors; the other w a y — t h e way Marx would have preferred—would be through a proletarian revolution in Great Britain. 5 Lenin gave the East a more important role in the world revolution. In his 1916 pamphlet, Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, he declared that since imperialism had internationalized class conflict by pitting oppressed nations against e x p l o i t a t i v e , capitalist nations, "national wars against imperialism" became inevitable. 6 Such wars, Lenin believed, would deprive the capitalist nations of the safety valve that imperialism had provided. This in turn would reintensify class contradictions in the West and thereby lead to the proletarian revolution in the capitalist world. Because of this interdependence, he wrote, "Socialists . . . must render determined support to the more revolutionary elements in the bourgeois democratic movements for national liberation in these c o u n t r i e s . " 7 In cases such as the Gilan uprising, Lenin could thus justify supporting a noncommunist, national revolutionary movement. Following the October revolution, national and colonial questions ceased being theoretical and became burning foreign policy issues. As the possibility of revolution in the West became increasingly remote, antiimperialist movements in the East assumed increasing strategic and tactical importance. D i f f e r e n c e s on this issue within the Communist International accounted for many of the fluctuations in Soviet foreign policy during the Gilan episode. In a November 24, 1918, article, Stalin reiterated and reemphasized the importance of the East to the world revolution, putting the ideas in Imperialism in stronger terms than had Lenin: "It is the duty of the Communists to intervene in the growing spontaneous movement in the East and develop it further, into a conscious struggle against imperialism." 8 Stalin's position as commissar of nationalities made him unusually receptive to the possibilities. Most Soviet leaders, influenced by Marxist ideology, believed that revolution in the East would be e x t r e m e l y difficult. T h e East had not attained the capitalist development prerequisite for a socialist revolution. T h e primary debate at the Second Congress of the Third International—held during July and August of 1920, while events in Gilan were reaching a critical point—was how to evaluate national liberation movements, and what policy the Comintern should take toward these movements. In Lenin's dialectical concept, national liberation movements should fight imperialism, which would bring on revolution in the West. The revolution in the West, in turn, would bring social and class content to the national r e v o l u t i o n s in the East. L e n i n s u p p o r t e d an alliance with "national revolutionary" or "bourgeois democratic" movements in the backwards Eastern countries. This strategy was based on two assumptions: first, that an alliance with the bourgeoisie in the Eastern nations was tactically necessary to create the

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conditions for the eventual social revolution; second, that the proletariat in the East was far too weak to be revolutionary at this stage. 9 Sultanzadeh, the leading Iranian Communist theoretician, disagreed. He insisted that this did not apply to countries such as Persia, "where the movement has already been going on for ten years or more"—that is, since the Constitutional Revolution. In such countries, Sultanzadeh argued, it was necessary to "create a purely Communist movement in opposition to the b o u r g e o i s d e m o c r a t i c m o v e m e n t . " 1 0 T h u s , Sultanzadeh firmly o p p o s e d cooperating with the "national bourgeois" liberation movements. As he was a leading figure in the Gilan episode, his views had a direct effect on the policies of the Persian Communist Party toward Kuchik Khan. Lenin himself left a substantial amount of maneuvering room. He differentiated between the "reformist" bourgeoisie and the "revolutionary" bourgeoisie, advising that the former be combated and the latter be supported. Other unresolved issues in Lenin's theses contributed to differences among Iranian Communists. While Lenin favored a temporary alliance with "bourgeoisdemocratic" elements, he also insisted on the necessity for "struggle against the clergy and other reactionary and medieval elements in backward countries [to] c o m b a t p a n - I s l a m i s m . " 1 1 Not surprisingly, this sentiment left Iranian Communists uncertain whether or not they should ally themselves with Kuchik Khan. Kuchik was the leader of a "bourgeois-democratic" revolt; but he was also a clergyman with a pan-Islamist background. Thus, during the summer of 1920, the Soviet leadership's support for Kuchik's revolt was, at best, cautious. Gilani and Iranian Azerbaijani landlords and tribal leaders who were revolting against the Tehran government had offered to ally themselves with the Soviets. The Soviets had rejected this offer because these would-be allies were so clearly m e m b e r s of the " f e u d a l " and " m e d i e v a l " hierarchy that the C o m m u n i s t s sought to o v e r t h r o w . 1 2 Both ideologically and practically, Kuchick's movement offered the Soviets more; he was perceived as a true national revolutionary who had great support among the urban and rural masses. Supporting his movement would therefore be both "ideologically correct" and pragmatic. On April 30, 1920, the Lankaran Committee of the Communist Party in Soviet Azerbaijan sent Kuchik a letter illustrating this interaction of ideology and pragmatism: The only men who has dared to raise the red flag against England was you! . . . You are the man to free the noble, oppressed Persian people from the foreign yoke. . . . As long as the Persian people want it, we will support our Persian brothers and help them to drive the English from Persia. 13 Thus the Soviets chose Kuchik as their ally against the British. On M a y 18, 1920, a large Soviet naval force led by Feodor Raskolnikov arrived in Enzeli. The Soviet navy attacked Deniken's ships and British land

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positions but avoided attacking Iranian civilian areas. This contributed to the favorable reception from the local population. The crowd at the Enzeli port enthusiastically chanted, "Long Live Iran! Long Live Soviet Russia! Death to England! Death to Vossugh al-Dowleh and the traitors!" Even in Rasht, which was more conservative than was Enzeli, the news of the Soviet arrival and the British departure was heard with relief. 14 At this point, the political differences between the Jangali leaders widened. On the eve of the Soviet landing, Ehsanollah and Kuchik were divided on serious matters of policy. Kuchik wondered how far his goals and those of the Soviets coincided; Ehsanollah had no such worries. As he wrote in his memoirs years later: O n the m o r n i n g of the B o l s h e v i k landing, K u c h i k Khan w a s b e g i n n i n g his m o r n i n g prayers and asked m e to j o i n him in prayer, "at least for the arrival of our friends." I told him, "I h a v e not prayed up to this date, and I'm a d v i s i n g you, if y o u want to be a friend o f the B o l s h e v i k s , discard religion."15

Serious tactical differences reinforced this ideological division: Ehsanollah accused Kuchik of wanting to limit the Jangali movement to Gilan. The radical Azeri, wanting to capture Tehran, asked Kuchik to put his nationalistic tendencies aside to avoid "committing a crime against the world revolution." 16 While the socialist Ehsanollah objected to Kuchik's nationalism, nationalist leaders came from Tehran and urged Kuchik to ally himself with the Soviets. This alliance, they felt, was necessary to end the British domination of Iran formalized in the 1919 treaty. According to Kuchik's nephew Ismail Jangali, the nationalists' urging convinced Kuchik to seek an alliance with the Soviets. 17 On May 21, seven Jangali leaders (not including Ehsanollah) met with Raskolnikov and Orzhonikidze on the Soviet ship Kursk. Also present were members of the Baku Adalat Committee. In the course of the parley, Kuchik insisted on the absence of all Communist propaganda "for a certain time, as [the people being nationalistic and religious, such propaganda] would prejudice the cause of the Revolution." He also demanded that private ownership be left inviolate. 18 The Adalat members objected to Kuchik's demands, but Raskolnikov and O r z h o n i k i d z e agreed to them. T h e final a g r e e m e n t included also the establishment of a provisional republican government, Soviet noninterference, and the free election of a government by a constituent assembly after the capture of Tehran. T h e agreement stipulated that no additional Soviet troops would arrive in Iran without the permission of Kuchik's government, and that his "Iranian Republic" would undertake to pay the Soviet troops already in Iran. It promised that the Soviets would return all tsarist economic concessions, as well as the commodities of Iranian merchants in Baku that were confiscated during the revolution, to the Iranian Republic in Rasht. Additionally, Kuchik was to receive weapons from the Soviets free of charge. 1 9 These terms seemed more than generous to Kuchik; he avoided giving his movement the "social content"

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the Adalat sought but was nonetheless promised a large degree of Soviet support. L. M. Karakhan, the Soviet deputy commissar of foreign affairs, agreed with Orzhonikidze and Raskolnikov that the "social revolution" should be downplayed in Iran. In secret instructions on May 23, 1920, he wrote to them that it was necessary to "unite Kuchik Khan, the communists, and the other democratic groups against the British." Proletarians, peasants, bourgeoisie, Democrats, and Communists were to be united in this fight. The application of Soviet principles in Iran, Karakhan wrote, would only weaken the "Iranian war of liberation." Therefore he applauded the formation of an Iranian political united front to establish a bourgeois democracy but simultaneously cautioned against judging all of Iran by the enthusiastic reception the Soviets had received in the north. 20 Trotsky was even more cautious; as commissar of war, he was faced by the Russo-Polish War. The Poles had advanced into Russian territory and occupied Kiev in the spring of 1920, making Trotsky fearful of opening up a sccond front in the East. On May 26, he sent a telegram to Raskolnikov cautioning him against interfering in Iran's internal affairs under the Soviet flag and against using Soviet troops in Iran. Kuchik, Trotsky wrote, was to be informed that Russia could not support his revolution overtly because of Soviet neutrality and the assurances of friendship from the Tehran government. Any aid was to be given in the name of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan. Trotsky also instructed Raskolnikov to "let the English understand that we have no intention of attacking them in the East, particularly in Persia." 21

The Gilan Republic While some Soviet leaders had reservations about him, Kuchik apparently decided that Soviet support was worth having. On June 4, 1920, Kuchik and Ehsanollah announced the formation of an "Iranian Socialist Soviet Republic" in Rasht. The governmental program's four points echoed Kuchik's nonradical reformism: The Iranian monarchy was abolished and a republic established; individuals and their property were to be protected; all unjust agreements and treaties concluded by the Iranian government with foreign powers were to be cancelled (clearly a reference to the 1919 treaty). The final point proclaimed equality among all human races and the defense of Islam as a sacred duty. 22 The composition of the government, like its program, showed the influence of Kuchik's conservatism. While the members of Kuchik's cabinet were styled "commissars" in Soviet fashion, none of the nine members came from Adalat, and six had belonged to Ettehad-i Islam. The Gilan Soviet's religious conservatism was further emphasized in a declaration, issued a few days after its establishment, ordering "the people and the [Gilani] Red Army to respect religious principles and the country's traditions" and to avoid committing

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religious o f f e n s e s under pain of severe punishment. The commissariat was indigenous as well as conservative; all except Haj Mohammad Ja'far Kangavari, the commissar of communications, were native Gilanis. The Gilani public welcomed this indigenous, conservative government enthusiastically; the merchants were particularly supportive. 2 3 Kuchik hoped to gain the favor of Soviet Russian leaders by calling his government "Soviet" and emphasizing their common goals. Immediately after the republic was established, he sent a cable to Lenin, drawing his "attention to the fact" that "Persian oppressors, English traders, and diplomats supported by English troops" were exploiting Iran. Kuchik went on to plead eloquently for support: W e e x p e c t the a s s i s t a n c e from the free R u s s i a n nation that may p r o v e indispensable Republic.

for

Mindful

the

establishment

that

all

of

nations

the

Persian

liberated

Socialist

from

the

Soviet

yoke

of

dictatorship and c a p i t a l i s m s h o u l d be united into o n e brotherly union, I ask y o u to r e c o g n i z e the e m o t i o n s o f the Iranians, w h i c h h a v e liberated

from a centuries-old

yoke,

s o that this

holy

been

revolutionary

union may lead us to the final v i c t o r y . 2 4

Kuchik's apprehension lest the alliance with the Soviets radicalize his movement beyond his desires is evident. However, Kuchik's relatively conservative style of government did not go uncontested. On June 6, Adalat announced in Jangal its intent to overthrow imperialist domination and to confiscate all foreign enterprises and all major landholdings f o r redistribution among the peasants and soldiers of the revolutionary army. Iran, Adalat proclaimed, must ally itself with Soviet Russia and the world revolutionary army. 7 5 On the day the republic was formed, Ehsanollah gave a speech expressing his own radicalism: "Our dear respected comrade Kuchik Khan, the leader of the revolution who has gathered all toilers under the red flag of Iran, will lead us to India." 26 In an effort to appeal to Iranian national sentiments, Ehsanollah and the Adalati referred to Mazdak, a pre-Islamic Persian prophet with socialist tendencies. Instead of having a positive effect, this offended the Moslem sensitivities of the Gilanis. Ehsanollah's strident calls for female emancipation also aroused opposition among the conservative religious population. 2 7 Adalat formed a loose united front with Kuchik in the government. Alongside Kuchik's commissariat, there was a revolutionary committee, called Revkom. The very acronym was a foreign word, showing the heavy influence of the nonindigenous elements. Kuchik was the nominal head; other members included Kamran Agayev, a leader of Adalat; the left Jangali Ehsanollah; and two members of the Russian Soviet Army. 2 8 The existence of Revkom showed the beginnings of dual power centers. The radical, nonindigenous revolutionaries, largely from Soviet Azerbaijan, were attached as advisors to different branches of Kuchik's government. The strength of Revkom was most evident in the army;

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while Kuchik was the commissar of war, Ehsanollah was the actual commander of the Gilani Red Army. 29 While participating in the Gilan Soviet's government, the Adalat established itself in Iran. As mentioned in the previous chapter, Adalat had been formed in Baku by left-wing Democrats. Their affiliation with the Democratic Party made the Adalatis receptive to Ehsanollah and, like the Democrats before them, they found Enzeli the most receptive city in Gilan. 30 Adalat's programs and policies were always much more radical than those of Kuchik, the Democrats, or any other political forces in Iran. During the few weeks that Orzhonikidze and Raskolnikov were present in Enzeli, Adalat remained moderate in its activities and propaganda. While it advocated some redistribution of land and other anticapitalist measures, it remained allied with Kuchik's nationalist government. For this brief period, the Adalat allowed the war for national liberation to take precedence over the class struggle. After Orzhonikidze and Raskolnikov left, Adalat lost this restraint. It established its own armed youth league—the Communist Youth League of Iran—and began propagandizing Ihe city dwellers, using Azeri, the native language of most Adalati. It also began publishing three newspapers, all duallanguage in Farsi and Russian. The linguistic foreignness and political radicalism of this propaganda alienated the Gilanis. Adalat's increasing radicalism prevailed in its first congress on Iranian soil in Enzeli on July 23, 1920. Almost all of the members of this congress were Iranian Azcris and Armenians who had worked in Turkestan and the Caucasus; few spoke Farsi. The radical Armenian Sultanzadeh was among those present. 31 The Adalat changed its name to the Firqch Komonist-i Iran, or Communist Party of Iran, 32 referred to by Westerners as the Persian Communist Party (PCP). The congress adopted the following resolutions: to fight world capitalism jointly with Soviet Russia, and to support all Iranian elements opposed to the English and to the shah's government. "At the same time," the congress added, "we should not forget to keep our organization independent, and enlarge i t . . . so at the time of the class struggle for obtaining political power and land, we could lead the proletariat and the peasants." 33 This intransigence against cooperating with the "national bourgeoisie" obviously had a negative affect on the united front with Kuchik. For Lenin, the primary aim of the alliance was to remove the British from Iran; a national liberation war such as that of Kuchik was an acceptable means to achieve this goal. The PCP, however, was impatient to achieve victory in the class war; defeating the British and establishing national independence was not enough. The PCP used the more intransigent portions of Lenin's theses to justify its future actions against Kuchik. A major crisis faced the new Soviet government in Rasht. The Imperial Bank and the remaining financial apparatus of the Tehran government had left Gilan when the Soviet Republic was declared. The new government, which had a large and growing army to support, was devoid of funds and had no experienced

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bureaucratic or administrative personnel. Kuchik's commissariat created commissions to collect a "war tax" from the Gilani people. The Communists were well-represented in these commissions, and they took the money by force, alienating both merchants and the people who were taxed, which was almost everybody. 34 Kuchik, as usual, counseled greater moderation. The tax issue, as well as the increasingly antireligious propaganda of the Communist Party, increased the friction between the right wing of Jangal and the PCP. Kuchik's commissariat was further alienated by the PCP's failure to adhere to the agreement Kuchik had signed with Orzhonikidze. Enzeli was not turned over to Kuchik's administration but remained in PCP hands. The radicals also retained the former tsarist concessions; nor was the property of Iranian merchants in Baku, confiscated during the Russian Civil War, surrendered to Kuchik. Kuchik viewed the apparent failure of the Azerbaijani Soviets to honor their agreement as a deliberate effort to undermine his government; the relations between Rasht and Baku were correct at best. Also contrary to the terms Kuchik had obtained in the Kursk agreement, the PCP had infiltrated the government apparatus and was interfering in its actions (as, for example, in the tax commission described above). The PCP was bringing increasing numbers of Georgian, Armenian, and Azeri mohajer soldiers into the Gilani Red Army and swelling the ranks of the Kurdish soldiers, who were loyal to the radical Khalu Gorban. These actions created friction between conservatives and radicals within the army, as well as between Kuchik's conservative mujaheds, who were part of the army, and the independent Communist Youth League. The relationship between Kurds and Azeris in the Red Army was tense. 35 The conservative elements, along with most other Gilanis, were alarmed by the foreign origin as well as the radicalism of most Communists. The clergy and the bazaaris, in particular, were frightened by the possibility of the revolution becoming socialist. 36 The sudden prominence of Azeris and Kurds, which disturbed the general homogeneity of Gilani society, clearly reduced the population's enthusiasm for the revolution. All of these ideological and tactical differences would manifest themselves in the July 31 coup d'état. This, in turn, was the beginning of the downfall of the Gilan Revolution.

Oil and Politics: British and U.S. Policy The international milieu in which the Gilan Soviet Republic was formed had a decisive effect on its eventual collapse and subsequent political events in Iran. In turn, the Gilan revolution had important repercussions in international affairs. After Soviet troops landed in Gilan, the Tehran government, headed by Vossugh, appealed to the League of Nations. The league recommended that the Iranians negotiate directly with the Soviet government. 37 In fact, by this time, Vossugh was already in correspondence with Soviet authorities. He instructed

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his foreign minister, Prince Nosrat al-Dowleh Firuz, to meet with Krassin, the Soviet emissary in London, and inform him that there could be no negotiations or recognition of the Soviet government while Soviet troops remained on Iranian soil. Vossugh also made this view known to Chicherin. 3 8 Chicherin expressed hopes for stronger economic ties and a more cordial relationship between the two countries. He reiterated the Soviet position that the landing at Enzeli had been necessary to remove White Russian troops from the region. 39 Vossugh's appeals did not persuade the Soviets to withdraw. Although Iran remained under British occupation, and the South Persia Rifles were still under British control, the British and Vossugh were unable to dislodge the Soviet troops or to suppress the indigenous revolts in northern Iran. 4 0 Vossugh's inability to persuade the Soviets to withdraw their troops contributed to his administration's instability; his government fell in June 1920. The new prime minister was Mushir al-Dowleh, hereafter referred to by his Pahlavi-era name of Hassan Pimiya. Pirniya, whose family had supported the Constitutional Revolution, was very popular among Iranian nationalists. He immediately reinforced his reputation by declaring the 1919 treaty invalid, except in the unlikely event that it was ratified by the parliament. To ensure that there would be no ratification, he delayed the convening of the Fourth Majlis and dismissed most of the British advisors who had taken posts in Iran on the basis of the treaty. 4 1 He also attempted to renew Iran's traditional equilibrium by establishing diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, hoping that renewed ties would both prevent Iran's independence from being totally destroyed by the predominant British influence and hasten the departure of Soviet troops from Gilan. His choice of Ali Ansari, also called M u s h a v e r al-Mamalek, as an emissary to Moscow sent a clear message to the Soviets: Ansari was known for his anti-British sentiments and his antagonism to the 1919 treaty; Curzon's intense dislike for him was similarly well-known 4 2 T h e British government was alarmed by these developments. Britain protested Pirniya's willingness to negotiate with the Soviet government "as implying Political recognition which His Majesty's Government themselves had not yet granted." 4 3 Britain continued to pressure Pimiya to have the 1919 treaty ratified; Curzon threatened to withdraw all military and financial assistance from the Iranian government if it were not. 4 4 At the same time, Britain tried to control Iran's army, the most efficient unit of which was the Cossack Brigade, officered primarily by White Russians, whom, for varying reasons, the British regarded as untrustworthy. On November 1, 1920, General Edmund Ironside, the c o m m a n d e r of the British forces in Iran, persuaded Ahmad Shah to dismiss the White Russian c o m m a n d e r Starosselski and all other Russian officers. Pirniya resigned in protest, without having reached an agreement with the Soviets and without having succeeded in limiting British predominance. 4 5 The pro-British politician

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Sepahdar-i Rashti, who was regarded as a weak and vacillating person, took his place. 46 The British armed the extremely conservative Shahsavan tribesmen, who lived on the Azerbaijan-Gilan border, to fight the troops of the Gilan Soviet and contemplated reverting to their old role of "Champions of Islam against the Russian Ogre." 47 In case these tactics did not remove the Soviets from northern Iran, or in case the Gilan Soviet captured Tehran, the British had an alternative plan. The intelligence officer Captain E. Noel was sent to Iran to establish a Southern Persian Confederation, featuring southern tribes such as the Bakhtiaris. The establishment of a Soviet government in the north, Noel wrote, "would free our hands to take action in the South." 48 This British contingency plan had been formed by Curzon in 1892. 49 There has been much written, especially by Iranians, to the effect that the Reza Khan-Seyyed Zia coup on February 21, 1921, was, like these contingency plans, also designed to preserve British interests in Iran. The degree of influence that the British government had over the events following the coup may be debated. However, it is clear that before the coup British agents in Iran were casting about for some method to implement the terms of the 1919 treaty and stop the internal disintegration that might facilitate a Communist takeover. General Ironside certainly promoted Reza Khan's rise to power. Ironside believed that a strong military dictatorship would relieve the British of their military worries in Iran. He introduced Reza Khan, then an ambitious Cossack colonel who had distinguished himself in the central government's attempts to suppress the Gilan Soviet, to Seyyed Zia, an anglophile, anti-Communist newspaper editor who had staunchly supported the treaty. Reza Khan's Cossacks captured Tehran, deposed the Sepahdar government, and forced Ahmad Shah to appoint Seyyed Zia prime minister and Reza Khan commander of the armed forces. Norman, head of the British legation at Tehran counseled the reluctant shah to accede to the demands. 50 These circumstances have led to a widespread perception among Iranians that Reza Khan was put in power by Great Britain; this perception contributed to his unpopularity during his reign. 51 Seyyed Zia's government immediately proclaimed the 1919 treaty a dead issue. The Iranian people would not accept any government that supported the treaty, and the Soviets had announced that under no circumstances would they accept its validity. 52 Norman wrote "No Persian Government could work nor could relations between the two countries become normal till [the treaty] had ceased to exist, at any rate in name." He said Seyyed Zia had told him that in order to avoid existing hostility of Russian Soviet Government, it w a s o f u t m o s t i m p o r t a n c e that p r o - B r i t i s h character of n e w administration should for the present as far as possible be disguised. In conclusion, he said that if Great Britain wished to save her position here she must sacrifice shadow for substance, remain in the background and help Persia effectively but unostentatiously. 5 3

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Seyyed Zia planned to keep the British advisors in the Ministry of Finance and in the army. 54 Clearly, the British viewed the Seyyed Zia government as a means of preserving their economic and political interests in Iran—the same interests that they had sought to secure by the 1919 treaty and their assorted contingency plans. On February 26, within a week of taking office, Seyyed Zia signed the Irano-Soviet Treaty of 1921, the terms of which had already been negotiated by Pirniya's government. It cancelled all economic privileges, concessions, and capitulatory rights that had been granted to tsarist Russia and its citizens, and gave Iran shipping rights in the Caspian Sea. The most significant clauses, Articles 5, 6, and 13, gave the Soviets important military and economic guarantees: Article 5 enjoined both parties to prohibit the formation in their respective territories of "any organizations or groups . . . whose object is to engage in acts of hostility" against the other; Article 6 allowed the Soviets to enter troops into Iran in the event that troops of an anti-Soviet third party were present, and the Iranian government failed to remove this threat; in Article 13, the Iranian government promised not to grant a third government any concession previously granted to tsarist Russia that had since been returned to Iran. 55 Ahmad Shah feared that Seyyed Zia was planning to dethrone him. To protect himself from his ambitious prime minister, he allied himself with Reza Khan, commander of the armed forces and now minister of war. The Soviets perceived Seyyed Zia as a British puppet, despite the treaty and his initial declaration that he wanted internal reforms and better relations with the Soviet Union. 56 They regarded Zia as an obstacle to cordial Irano-Soviet relations in general and to British withdrawal in particular and made it clear that the withdrawal of Soviet troops was contingent upon the departure of British forces. The first recognized Soviet ambassador to Iran, Fyodor A. Rothstein, supported Ahmad Shah's efforts to oust Seyyed Zia. 57 The interaction of these internal and external factors forced Seyyed Zia to resign the prime ministership. He went into exile and did not return to Iran until September 1943. He was replaced on June 4, 1921, by Ahmad Qavam alSaltaneh. Although he was Vossugh's brother, Qavam had supported Shuster during the latter's unsuccessful mission in Iran in 1910-1911, throughout his career, he was known for his pro-U.S. stand. On Qavam's appointment, the shah instructed him not to follow a pro-British policy. 58 The new prime minister took outspoken critics of Seyyed Zia and the 1919 treaty, including Mohammed Mossadegh, into his government. Qavam soon made it clear that he did not intend to employ the British military and financial advisors retained in office by Seyyed Zia. Mossadegh, as finance minister, supported Qavam wholeheartedly in this move; 59 the British officers were unpopular with Iranians and objectionable to the Soviets. The South Persia Rifles were disbanded when Qavam refused Britain's demands that the Persian government pay for their maintenance. 60 Through these actions and through his relatively cordial relations with the Soviet Union, Qavam was trying not only

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to restore Iran's traditional pattern of equilibrium between its southern and northern neighbors but to add a new clement by bringing in a third power—the United States. On June 28, 1921, the Majlis informed the premier that no time should be lost in employing U.S. financial advisors and curbing the AngloPersian Oil Company's powers. The Majlis also recommended that an oil concession in the northern provinces be granted to "some progressive American c o m p a n i e s . " 6 1 Qavam energetically pursued this policy, which had been initiatied near the end of Pirniya's premiership. Because he could expect opposition from the Soviet Union as well as from Great Britain, it was only after the Soviet troops had withdrawn from Gilan in October 1921 that Qavam made public his government's desire to sell such a concession to Standard Oil of New Jersey. In this period, according to U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Dealing, the United States sought to open "oil opportunities" to everyone "on a basis of equality" throughout the world. 6 2 The U.S. government accordingly supported Iran's northern oil initiative and instructed the U.S. minister in Tehran: The government of the United States is deeply interested in the "open door" and it would insist on this principle in the exchanges with the British or any other government. The American government attaches the greatest importance to the preservation . . . of such opportunity for American interests as is enjoyed by the interests of any other nation. 6 3

At the end of November the Iranian Majlis passed a bill granting Standard Oil a f i f t y - y e a r c o n c e s s i o n for petroleum exploitation in A z e r b a i j a n , Gilan, Mazandaran, Astarabad, and Khorasan, the five Iranian provinces adjoining the Soviet Union. In an effort to preclude any possible collusion between Standard Oil and British companies, Article 5 stipulated, "The Standard Oil Company should have no right whatever to transfer the concession to any government or company or person. Also any participation of other capital must have the consent of the Majlis." 6 4 Both Britain and the Soviet Union protested. According to a British diplomatic note of November 25, 1921, the oil in the north belonged to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, as Khoshtaria had sold them his rights to oil exploitation in the five northern provinces. 6 5 Clearly Britain wished to preserve its economic and political interests in Iran. Britain's protests were answered by a statement that the Khoshtaria concession had never been ratified by the Majlis, and that the Anglo-Persian Oil Company's purchase was therefore invalid. 66 The British then negotiated with the United States. They affirmed their "basic agreement" with the open d o o r policy and offered to give Standard Oil exploration rights in Mesopotamia and Palestine if Standard Oil agreed to enter into a partnership with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Britain informed Standard Oil that British interests in southern Iran would prevent the U.S. company from transporting oil through the south, which was clearly necessary to export it. Standard Oil therefore agreed to the partnership, receiving in

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exchange exploration rights elsewhere in the Middle East. 6 7 Iranians— government and public—reacted unfavorably to this turn of events. The concession to Standard Oil was annulled because the company's partnership with Anglo-Persian clearly violated the original terms, which had been designed to limit, not enhance, British economic and political power in Iran. The Iranian government subsequently negotiated with other U.S. oil companies, most notably Sinclair. On July 16, 1924, the Parliamentary Oil Commission ratified a concession to Sinclair encompassing the four northern provinces except Gilan. 68 This concession, which also faced active British opposition, was similarly destined to fail; relations between Iran and the United States ruptured after the mysterious murder of the U.S. consul Major Robert Imbrie in 1924. Even before Imbrie's assassination, the U.S. State Department had limited its country's role in Iranian affairs by agreeing not to "encourage any endeavors on the part of the Persian Government to play off the United Stales Government against His Majesty's Government" 69 and thereby threaten British interests. The Soviets objected to Iran's attempts to grant oil concessions in the north to either Standard Oil or Sinclair. A September 1922 Pravda article expressed the concern that "a capitalist center on the Russo-Persian border" could be transformed into a "military base [from which] to attack Russia." 7 0 In a November 1921 note to Qavam's government, the Soviets claimed the proposed concession to Standard Oil violated the 1921 treaty, which prohibited granting to other powers tsarist concessions returned to Iran. The Iranian foreign minister replied that since the Khoshtaria concession had never been ratified, "the document in the hands of Khoshtaria had nothing to do with the treaty between the Persian and Russian governments." 71 The Soviets insisted that it did and continued to protest.

Soviet and Iranian Communist Policies The Soviets' withdrawal from Gilan in October 1921 was part of an overall reorientation in their tactics for achieving world revolution. Their long-term strategy in this period relied increasingly on peaceful coexistence and compromise with "bourgeois" nations and groups. As part of this essentially defensive program, imperialism, especially British imperialism in countries on the Soviets' southern border, had to be neutralized. In Iran, the Soviet ambassador, Rothstein, promoted propaganda that did not emphasize social revolution but instead concentrated on condemning the British presence. 72 The 1921 Irano-Soviet Treaty reassured Soviet leaders that Iran would not become a British base, as did the emergence of what they initially perceived as the centralizing nationalist government in Tehran, in which Reza Khan became preeminent. 73 Lenin recommended that Communists worldwide take advantage of political

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compromise with bourgeois elements: "Political leaders of the revolutionary class are absolutely useless if they are incapable of 'changing tack, or o f f e r i n g conciliation and compromise' in order to take evasive action in a patently disadvantageous battle." 7 4 After the Gilan episode, which was m a r k e d by s e r i o u s d i s c o r d b e t w e e n C o m m u n i s t s and " b o u r g e o i s " revolutionaries, Iranian Communists followed Lenin's advice and formed a bloc with the Socialists for parliamentary elections. Together the two parties established the Shawra-ye Mutahedeh-i Ittahadieh-i Kargaran, or Central Council of Federated Trade Unions (CCFTU), which helped organize new trade unions throughout Iran. The head of the Socialist Party, Suleiman Mirza Iskandari, was elected to the Majlis with Communist support and becamc minister of education in 1923. 75 The Iranian Communist Party, referring to the Marxist conception of the necessity for historical stages of development, supported a strong central administration and opposed provincial uprisings. They sought to unite Iran against British imperialism. 7 6 Meanwhile, Communists introduced socialist ideology to the masses in several newspapers; in Tehran, Haqiqat (Truth)—the most widely circulated—was edited by Pishevari. 7 7 Soviet policy at this time, like the policy of the Iranian Communists, was dedicated to preserving Iran as a strong, unified state. Karakhan's instructions to the Soviet Embassy in Iran, in November 1922, stated: T h e p o l i c y o f the S o v i e t Russian g o v e r n m e n t toward Persia, w h i c h strives for the strengthening of the political and e c o n o m i c p o w e r of the Persian government, c o u l d not sympathize with any form of separatism in Persia, not to speak o f struggle against the central government. 7 8

Hence the Soviets turned down British suggestions that Iran be divided into two spheres of influence, in a m a n n e r "analogous to the 1907 treaty." 7 9 F o r ideological as well as strategic reasons, the Soviets supported what they perceived as centralizing, bourgeois governments on their southern border. Ideologically, this was desirable because it would bring these young countries capitalist development; strategically, it would help protect Soviet Russia, the homeland of socialism, from imperialist attacks. After the Soviet troops withdrew, Rothstein wrote Kuchik, telling him: The separation of Gilan from Iran w o u l d be harmful to the progress o f Iran. . . . The nation of Iran w o u l d not benefit from a weak government, but the e x i s t e n c e of a weak government could benefit only the foreign e x p l o i t e r s . O n l y a strong c e n t r a l i z e d g o v e r n m e n t can n e u t r a l i z e imperialist intrigues. 8 0

From this letter, it is clear that Qavam and his finance minister Mossadegh had succeeded in removing the Soviet troops from Gilan by reestablishing a state of positive equilibrium b e t w e e n the foreign powers in Iran. T h e y pursued

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equilibrium both by reestablishing relations with the Soviet Union and by reducing the British presence. As Karim Sanjabi analyzed this situation: Dr. M o s s a d e g h , like m a n y other Iranian n a t i o n a l i s t s o f the time, b e l i e v e d that the 1 9 2 1 treaty w o u l d . . . prevent the British from e s t a b l i s h i n g political h e g e m o n y over Iran, and thereby maintain Iran's i n d e p e n d e n c e . . . . Dr. M o s s a d e g h ' s actions, in e x p e l l i n g the British o f f i c e r s from the Ministry of Finance, were facilitated by the Treaty of 1921.81

After the British troops left Iran in the summer of 1921, the Soviet troops left Gilan in October, in accord with the 1921 Irano-Soviet Treaty. Iranian actions in reducing the British presence in Iran had expedited the Soviet departure, 8 2 after which Kuchik negotiated with Qavam in an effort to obtain local administrative and military autonomy for Gilan. Qavam and Reza Khan categorically opposed this autonomy, which they felt would weaken the authority of the central government: 8 3 a diametrical opposition that made negotiations fruitless. Reza Khan took personal charge of an expedition to eliminate the Gilan Republic. In N o v e m b e r 1921, a month after the departure of the Soviet troops, the Gilan Republic, weakened by internal divisions (to be discussed further in the next chapter), collapsed. In o r d e r to neutralize the southern borderlands, the Soviets signed comprehensive treaties with Turkey and Afghanistan in the weeks following their treaty with Iran. Supporting "bourgeois nationalist" leaders, so hotly debated at the earlier party congresses, now became the Soviet Union's official policy. Soviet experts on Iran wrote extensively on the nature of Reza Khan's dictatorship, mostly with approval. Wrote Soviet scholar "Iransky" in 1923: "Reza Khan is representing a movement that will transform Iranian society. The existence of a strong centralized government, based on a unified national army, will propel the trade and culture and industry of Iran out of the feudal stage." 8 4 The young nations on the Soviets' southern border had "the struggle undertaken against i m p e r i a l i s m " 8 5 in common with the Soviet Union. Of Reza Khan's "anti-imperialist" policies, Iransky wrote: Iran w a s at the point of c o m p l e t e disintegration b e c a u s e o f the British and their a l l i e s , the reactionary khans. . . . In order to extricate Iran from this . . . situation, the progressive classes of Iranian society had to support a national military dictatorship based on a national army that w o u l d e x p a n d the productive forces of the Iranian e c o n o m y . . . . T h e merchant and industrial b o u r g e o i s i e supported the e s t a b l i s h m e n t of a national army and other o f R e z a Khan's reforms, such as the reform of the financial administration, the disarming of the tribes, the suppression of the feudal tribal leaders, and the evacuation of foreign troops. 8 6

Around the mid-1920s, the Soviets and the local C o m m u n i s t parties

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became disillusioned with supporting "bourgeois-national" leaders such as Reza Khan, who had imprisoned many Communists and destroyed the party organizations in Iran. Under these circumstances, the Second Congress of the Persian Communist Party was held secretly in the city of Urumieh (Rezaieh) in Azerbaijan. At this congress the PCP insisted on the need to defend the Soviet Union as a bastion of socialism and to preserve the solidarity between the PCP and its socialist base. Sultanzadeh, who had been in disfavor with the PCP and the international Communist movement for his dogmatic opposition to forming a united front with bourgeois elements during the Gilan revolution, played a major role in this meeting. His ultraleftist views here became dominant again. They seemed to have been proved correct by recent events: Reza Khan's action in crowning himself shah in 1926 had dashed the Communists' expectations that the nation was on its way to becoming a republic. The PCP reiterated the nationalities' right to autonomy, demanding a strong national republic, ruled by "people's revolutionary assemblies" rather than a parliament. It called for an alliance of soldiers, peasants, and workers, along with petty bourgeoisie, in an agrarian revolutionary movement. This alliance was to be organized in a new party, Iran's National Revolutionary Party, which was to be spearheaded by the PCP. The comprador bourgeoisie was described as a reactionary element that had treacherously joined forces with Reza Shah, whom Sultanzadeh (and the PCP) described as an agent of British imperialism. 87 The conclusions of the Sixth Congress of the Comintern, held in Moscow in the second half of 1928, during the height of the interwar tension between the Soviet Union and the West, was even more decisive in its opposition to alliance with bourgeois parties. 8 8 Sultanzadeh and Sharghi, the Iranian delegates, contributed a great deal to the debates on the question. Sharghi warned the Congress against indiscriminate alliances with bourgeois forces; Reza Shah, for example, was "the representative of the Persian reaction, and not the representative of Persian nationalism and progress." 89 In the revised report that emerged, local Communist parties were warned to avoid "national-reformist" groups—into which category Reza Shah and Ataturk fell. It should be noted that the resolutions of the Sixth Congress never applied to Iran, as Reza Khan had destroyed the Iranian Communist Party's existence as a functional entity. In the controversies over concessions, oil became an important—in fact central—issue in Iran's internal politics and in its relations with Britain, the USSR, and the United States. Oil, with its economic and political ramifications, has retained this important position in Iran's internal and external policies to this date. In their relations with Iran, the British sought to preserve their political and economic influence, especially their oil interests, by a variety of tactics. When the Iranians failed to implement the 1919 treaty, they considered dividing Iran and keeping the southern half under their own influence. Eventually, they abandoned the Sheikh Khazal of Mohammerah, a staunchly pro-British southern Arab leader whose autonomy they had supported, and came

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to support a strong central government in Tehran. 9 0 When they recognized Reza Khan as shah, it was under the condition that he recognize and observe all preexisting treaties between Iran and Great Britain. 91 The U.S. role in Iranian affairs at this time was more limited. The "open door" policy was obviously developed (at least in large part) to facilitate U.S. economic infiltration, especially by promoting U.S. oil interests in Iran, while the Soviets were most interested in neutralizing Iran as a potential British base. This explains their landing at Enzeli, their opposition to the 1919 treaty, and the assurances they obtained in the 1921 Irano-Soviet treaty. Their policy of seeking to nullify British influence also helps account for their initial support for Reza Khan. The Soviets believed a nationalist leader could bring capitalist development to Iran and fight British imperialism, both of which would aid Iran's eventual socialist transformation. 9 2 Iranian foreign policymakers during the period of the Gilan Soviet made some attempts to achieve a state of equilibrium among the foreign powers in Iran. All prime ministers sought to obtain the evacuation of the Soviet troops in Iran; Vossugh, Sepahdar, and Seyyed Zia tried to obtain this while following a one-sided pro-British policy. Pirniya and Qavam sought to achieve the same goal by creating equilibrium among the foreign powers in Iran. As British i n f l u e n c e w a s at this time predominant, these two p r e m i e r s tried to counterbalance Britain by bringing the Soviet Union and the United States into Iran's political and economic arenas. Thus, Pirniya and Qavam created shortlived states of positive equilibrium among the foreign powers in Iran. T h e foreign policies of Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union, and Iran's positive equilibrium policy all combined to influence the fate of the Gilan Republic and the future of Iran. These foreign policy factors mingled with the internal situation in the Gilan Republic to bring about its collapse and the beginning of Reza Khan's Pahlavi dictatorship.

5 The Fall of the Gilan Republic: Collapse from Within

interpretation of Communist ideology, personal jealousies Dogmatic among the leaders, religious fanaticism, and mistakes of the new government were jointly responsible for the failure [of the Gilan revolution]. —Iransky (1923)

The foreign policy considerations described in the previous chapter contributed to the collapse of the Gilan Republic, but there were also other causes. Internal pressures played a substantial role in the revolutionary regime's demise. The departure of the Soviet leaders Orzhonikidze and Raskolnikov from Enzeli triggered an upsurge of these internal pressures. From that time, the schism between Kuchik and the right Jangalis, on the one side, and Ehsanollah and most of the Persian Communist Party, on the other, widened. Kuchik's goal was a national constitutional revolution; Ehsanollah and the PCP wanted a social revolution. This divergence in aims created serious antagonism among the Gilani revolutionary leaders. The viewpoint of the Ehsanollah-PCP faction is perhaps best expressed in the writings of the radical, dogmatic Sultanzadeh, who had been elected first secretary of the PCP in thè Enzeli congress. As we have seen in the previous chapter, Sultanzadeh disapproved of alliances with the bourgeoisie. While he supported a united front with the petty bourgeoisie, which he called the "most revolutionary class in the backward countries,"1 he categorically opposed joining with them in a national revolution, Sultanzadeh believed that the national revolution could be abbreviated or skipped over altogether in colonial and semicolonial countries, which could, thanks to their linkage to capitalist nations through the world economy, proceed directly to a social revolution. Sultanzadeh used Lenin's earlier analyses of imperialism to justify this position, 2 while he rejected the conclusions of On the National and Colonial Question, which Lenin had presented in the Second Congress of the Third International. In addition, Sultanzadeh claimed that the bourgeois revolution had already occurred in some 78

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countries, including Iran. The Communist support Lenin had suggested for "bourgeois democratic movements . . . would mean leading the masses to counter-revolution. In such countries, we must create a purely Communist movement in opposition to the bourgeois democratic movement." 3 Here Sultanzadeh applied Lenin's April (1917) Theses, the theoretical bases for Russian Bolshevik policy between the February and October 1917 revolutions, to the Iranian situation. Kuchik Khan opposed the radical agrarian reforms sought by the PCP. Sultanzadeh claimed that Kuchik wanted to carry out the b o u r g e o i s - d e m o c r a t i c revolution by j o i n i n g with various khans, large-scale landowners, and feudal lords, o n the ground that the w h o l e nation should be united in the struggle against the Shah and the British. N e e d l e s s to say, it is o b v i o u s that the C o m m u n i s t Party could not support such a tactic. . . . The freeing of ihe peasants with the help of the feudal landowners was an illusion that the party had to combat quite seriously. 4

In addition to this ideological/tactical difference between the factions in Gilan, there was a strong personal rivalry between Ehsanollah and Kuchik. Ehsanollah had been a leftist Democrat, was exposed to anarchism in Europe, and was secular to the point of terrorism; Kuchik had been a member of the Moderate Party, was strongly religious, and believed in maintaining the social status quo. A strong antipathy between these two different personalities developed during the Gilan revolution, reflecting their differing political socializations. As the summer of 1920 wore on, Kuchik became increasingly alarmed at what he considered to be the "excesses" of the PCP and departed from Rasht. The PCP and the left Jangalis, for their part, grew impatient with Kuchik's conservative approach to revolution.

The Leftist Coup Three days after Sultanzadeh's July 28 speech calling for immediate social revolution, the PCP and the leftist Jangalis staged a coup d'état. The Iranian Red Army, controlled by Ehsanollah, gave the radicals the leverage they needed to overthrow Kuchik's government and capture state power. Iakov Blumkin and Budu Mdivani, both in Rasht at the time (and both later Trotskyites), have been credited with organizing the coup\ certainly they applauded it. 5 It is clear, however, that the PCP had the major role and was not following orders from any Soviet authority. Kuchik never accused the Soviets of responsibility for the coup or the events that followed; he believed, correctly, that the PCP had acted independently in opposition to Orzhonikidze and other Soviet authorities, who had counseled a gradual approach to revolution in Iran.6

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The new government's composition reflected the alliance between the left Jangalis and the PCP. It was headed by Ehsanollah and included three members of the PCP (see Table 5.1). One of them, Pishevari, was the minister of the interior. All three were Azeri-speaking mohajers. There were only two members of the former government, and only one of them, Seyyed Ja'far (Mohseni), was a native Gilani. The other was a Kurd and a former Left Democrat and a personal friend of Ehsanollah. Khalu Gorban, the Kurdish army commander, was the commissar of war. 7 The ethnic backgrounds and the radical social goals of the members of this new government alienated the local population. The new government proclaimed that the Gilani Red Army was to be reorganized, "based on Communist principles," to capture Tehran. It demanded the "abolition of capitalism and feudalism" and the fulfilment of "the needs of the workers in the cities and villages." 8 A "reign of terror" began against the new regime's enemies, who were found both within and outside Gilan, for the revolution now emphasized and implemented class struggle. The reorganized army was used as an instrument to consolidate the position of the new revolutionary regime. The revolutionary leaders tried to centralize, regiment, and militarize the society. Government bureaucrats were replaced by PCP members (usually Azeri-speaking), and each commissariat was reorganized under a soviet. The state bureaucracy was centralized and expanded as it assumed a greater role in citizens' lives. Forced labor was imposed; even government employees were obliged to conduct public works. A seige mentality prevailed in Gilan. Revolutionary military courts were established; ad hoc revolutionary tribunals were set up to implement justice; conscription was compulsory for all men between eighteen and forty-five years old; travel within Gilan and from Gilan to other parts of Iran was forbidden without government permission; and military posts were placed at city gates to check the movements of people and foodstuffs. The new regime established a literacy program and a variety of cultural organizations, which provided channels for the political education of the masses; public lectures concentrated on developing a "class consciousness" among city-dwellers and peasants; a propaganda campaign was run against the national bourgeoisie in general and Kuchik in particular. Ehsanollah's government moved to implement "war communism," which it proclaimed as its official policy. 9 It created a new administrative office to obtain food and other commodities, requisitioned buildings, rationed food in the cities, and confiscated private property to support the army in the war against the Tehran government. Although it confiscated land and gave it to the peasants, and though mohajers established peasant soviets that carried on forceful political agitation among them, food, seed-grain, and peasants' horses were seized and brought to the cities, which were treated as the primary source of socialist power. The substantial "middle peasantry" suffered from these antiproperty actions, while the city people were taxed exorbitantly. These

THE FALL O F THE GILAN REPUBLIC

Table 5.1.

81

Composition of the Red Cabinet Position

Ethnic origin

Political affiliation

Ehsanollah Khan

Head of State, Commissar for Foreign Affairs

Iranian Azeri

Left Democrat, Punishment Committee

Khalu Gorban

Commissar of War

Shi'ite Kurd

None

Seyyed Ja'far (Mohseni)

Commissar of Post and TelcgTaph

Gilani

Jangali

Javad Zadeh (Pishevari)

Commissar of Interior

mohajer Azeri

PCP

Agazadeh

Commissar of Justice

mohajer Azeri

PCP

Bahram Agayev

Commissar of Public Works

Caucasian mohajer Azeri

PCP

Jafar Kangavari

Commissar of Education

Shi'ite Kurd

Left Democrat

Member

Source: Yegikian, [The Soviet Union and ihe Jangal Movement], pp. 91-93, 149-150, 504; and Octobcr 21, 1988, letter from Kurdish historian Mohammad Samadi; Fakhraii [Commander of Jangal], p. 272.

impositions did not endear the revolutionaries to either rural or urban populations. Antireligious revolutionary propaganda contributed to the tension between the revolutionary leaders and the masses. Mosques were closed in all the cities; the government campaigned energetically against the veil for women and against other cultural-religious traditions. As a result of such actions, national religious figures issued a fatwa, or high religious decree analogous to a papal bull, that declared a "holy war" against the red government. 10 The strong patrimonial relationship existing between landlords and peasants was reinforced by religious strictures on private property. Although many peasants in Gilan owned their land, a number of large landowners had a great political influence on the smaller property owners. When the revolutionaries confiscated the great landlords' land and attempted to give the peasants communal authority, the peasants adamantly rejected the land, saying: "The land belongs to the landlords. We do not wish to possess it." Soviet Orientalist M. Pavlovich wrote: "[T]he peasants refused to

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

accept land which the Communists proposed to confiscate from the landowners." sometimes even pursuing political agitators with cudgcls, thereby actively resisting instead of aiding the prospective reform. 11 The revolutionaries had removed the traditional authority figures, even executing some of Gilan's major resident landowners, without having provided an alternative authority. This added to the confusion in revolutionary Gilani society. The rejection of revolutionary land reform illustrates the peasants' acceptance of the basic social structure. The neo-Marxist Abrahamian, in his writings, underestimates the strength of religion as a bulwark of the social hierarchy; he does not adequately explain the lack of class consciousness among the peasants in northern Iran, whom he describes (accurately) as more politically articulate than their counterparts elsewhere in Iran. 12 The Gilani peasants' national consciousness did not create a class consciousness among them, and their considerable aptitude for national revolution did not incline them toward social revolution. Soviet scholars have long recognized this fact. Irandust, who characterized Iranian peasants in general as non- or antirevolutionary, wrote: It is true . . . that peasants played an active role in the Gilan revolution. Gilan's peasants, on the w h o l e , stood at the forefront of the development of the revolution. . . . However, the Gilani peasant is highly religious. . . . During the second part of the Gilan revolution, when the government transferred the landlords' land to the peasants, Gilani peasants refused to take the land because of the strict Qur'anic stipulations on the inviolability of landlords' rights. . . . Even after the actual transfer, they believed that the land actually belonged to the landlord. 1 3

The policies of Ehsanollah's government also alienated the Gilani bourgeoisie, which had supported the Gilan Soviet in its initial stage. The middle class had hoped that Kuchik's national revolution would eliminate British economic (and political) influence and thereby enhance their own economic and social positions. They had also looked forward to renewing trade with Russia; some merchants had property in Soviet Azerbaijan that they hoped to reclaim. Even some landlords, hoping to enhance their income by renewing their grain exports to the north, had supported Kuchik's revolt: Kuchik had not threatened their class status as Ehsanollah and the PCP did. Like the peasants, the Gilani bourgeoisie wanted a national, not a social, revolution. 14 The red government's campaign against capitalism and feudalism destroyed their hopes. The urban middle class was terrorized; merchants' cash and warehouses were taken from them, and many were forced to flee. Land reform affected the bourgeoisie as well; 60 percent of Gilani merchants in this period owned land. 15 Kuchik, meanwhile, was in hiding at his guerrilla base in Fomenat, where he led an armed resistance against the red republic with considerable indigenous support. While fighting Ehsanollah, he continued to try to persuade the Rasht

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government to pursue a more moderate policy that would unify all classes, including landowners. He wrote to them on November 9, 1920: I have always been sure . . . that the success of a national movement depends on the level of the people's consciousness, not on iron and fire. Well-organized propaganda that adheres to national traditions is much more effective than radicalism. People of the East, Iranians in particular, are extremely religious and would never adopt extremist or adventurous convictions.16

Kuchik cautioned against a class revolution: It is better to keep these issues [land reform and the abolition of feudalism] quiet and instead concentrate our activities on uniting people to expel the British, abolish the monarchy, and annul the capitulatory treaties and all other treaties harmful to Iran. After we achieve such goals and capture Tehran, then w e can gradually attempt to implement some s o c i a l p o l i c i e s , taking the people's attitude at that time into consideration. 1 7

Kuchik's objections to social revolution and his insistence on an alliance with landowners and tribal leaders help explain the ideological rift between him and the Rasht government.

Haydar Khan's Leadership In September 1920, the Congress of the Peoples of the East met in Baku, in Soviet Azerbaijan. The Baku congress attempted to produce unity in the Eastern revolutionary movements. The Iranian delegation, the second largest in the congress, was headed by Sultanzadeh and Haydar Khan, whose disagreement over tactical matters later manifested itself in an open split in the PCP. Ehsanollah, Pishevari, and the Iranian left Democrat Major Abolgasem Lahuti also attended.18 The congress was devoted primarily to the fight against imperialism, particularly British imperialism. Questions of class warfare, pursued so avidly by the Iranian delegates headed by Sultanzadeh, were also emphasized. Revolutionaries were advised to fight the British at the same time as they fought capitalists within their own countries. While the congress recommended that the PCP perform a critical analysis of the excesses of the Rasht government, 19 Zinoviev's statements may have reinforced the dogmatic leftism of Ehsanollah's administration. The Baku congress made emphatic resolutions against capitalist imperialism (especially British capitalist imperialism) but did not facilitate the use of local nationalism toward this goal. Zinoviev and other members of the

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

congress attacked nationalism much as they had attacked the Eastern wealthy classes. 20 The dogmatic internationalism expressed in the Congress of the Peoples of the East discouraged Ehsanollah from making alliances with nationalist (or bourgeois) elements in his struggle. The extent of cooperation with the bourgeoisie in anti-imperialist struggles remained a persistent tactical dilemma, which created a rift within the Persian Communist Party. In an October 1920 meeting in Baku, shortly after the congress, the P C P elected a new central committee, with Stalin's friend Haydar as the new secretary. Stalin was present at this meeting, at which Sultanzadeh and Pishevari were expelled. 21 T h e new party called itself Hizbeh Komonisteh Iran, or Adalat, thus adopting the name it had had before the open rift with Kuchik. It adopted new theses laid out by Haydar, which examined the social and political situation of Iran and the tactics that Adalat should adopt. Haydar examined the position of the nomadic tribes, and the Iranian government's powerlessness to establish law and order or prevent foreign economic domination, which, in turn, prevented the development of capitalism. Based on his analysis, Haydar supported the unification of peasants, tradesmen, artisans, petty bourgeoisie, and some middle bourgeoisie in a national liberation revolution, which was to be led by the petty bourgeoisie. After having eliminated British political and economic domination of Iran, the revolution could gradually assume class character and m o v e Iran toward communism. T o achieve these goals, Adalat was to help expand the national liberation movement in Iran. Meanwhile, the anti-British struggle was to be connected with a struggle to overthrow the monarchy. In the course of this dual struggle, the Communists were to gradually introduce class consciousness to the "revolutionary" class described above: S i n c e Iranians are not a c c u s t o m e d to the democratic forms of government, the PCP should attempt, even without the proletarian elements, gradually to transform the state machinery and bureaucracy into a s o v i e t form of government, with necessary and gradual preparation for such transformation. 22

The Adalat was to gather all revolutionary forces in the country around the party under the banner of a national liberation movement against the foreign imperialist forces and against the shah's government, which had sold itself to the foreigners. . . . In introducing class consciousness to the masses, the Communist Party of Iran should be extremely cautious about the religious beliefs and superstitions of the peasant masses and urban toilers. 2 3

Although Haydar was much more conciliatory to the bourgeoisie than was

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85

Sultanzadeh, he agreed with him on the necessity of land reform. Land reform, Haydar wrote, was needed to attract the peasant masses into the anti-British struggle: Whereas Sultanzadeh advocated land reform as part of a class revolution, Haydar advocated it as part of a national bourgeois revolution. Sultanzadeh did not believe that the agrarian question could be resolved in the framework of a bourgeois-democratic revolution. 24 Haydar proposed an alliance with the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, which he viewed as the representative of the petty bourgeoisie and intelligentsia, and with Kuchik, whom he described as a "renowned national liberation leader." 25 He even suggested participating in parliamentary elections in order to give the party a better political platform. In a supplementary "minimum program," Haydar called for the establishment of a provisional revolutionary government in Tehran that would include noncommunist revolutionary parties. Within this provisional government, the Communist Party would play a leading role: "The Communist Party of Iran realizes that achieving the above goals and programs is possible only within a bourgeois-democratic framework," Haydar concluded. Only then could Iran participate in the coming world revolution. Given the lack of class consciousness and the overwhelming influence of religion among the Iranian peasants, and "since hatred of foreigners is something that all classes (except the large landowners) can be united in, the idea that the revolution can from the beginning be based on class war and be led under the Communist banner is absolutely incorrect." 26 The PCP's adoption of Haydar's theses was a return to the Third International's advocacy of national liberation movements in colonial and semicolonial countries. Haydar's theses departed sharply from the dogmatism of the PCP under Sultanzadeh's leadership. In the Baku congress, the differences between these two delegation heads had manifested themselves quite clearly. 27 Haydar's practical application of Marxism-Leninism was adopted by the Soviets and the PCP (at least as a party) in their relations with Reza Khan's government, while the military dictator advocated republicanism. Many Persian Communists initially protested Haydar Khan's theses. Sultanzadeh's faction, which was formally expelled at the October PCP congress, insisted that Haydar's theses "demanded . . . in fact a national-reformist party" and did not have a Communist program at all. 28 This schism resulted in the existence of two separate Persian Communist Parties for about a year thereafter. 2 9 One, of course, was led by Sultanzadeh; the other by Haydar. Sultanzadeh's faction continued to function and vie for recognition with Haydar's Adalat Party. Zinoviev, who headed the Comintern, continued to recognize the Sultanzadeh-Pishevari faction despite its formal expulsion and to endorse this group's dogmatic policies. In the Third Congress of the Third International in June and July of 1921, only the left faction of the PCP was represented (by Pishevari). Pishevari supported Zinoviev in the congress, and this support appears to have been mutual. 30

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

While the radical visionary Zinoviev supported Sultanzadeh, the pragmatic Stalin supported Haydar. The Office of the Communist Party in the Caucasus, upheld by Stalin and Orzhonikidze, recognized and aided Haydar's right faction of the PCP. 3 1 Like Haydar, Stalin had often stressed the necessity of gradual implementation of revolutionary programs and respect for local customs and religion. There is a striking similarity between Stalin's China policy and Haydar's program in Gilan. Stalin criticised leftists (such as Zinoviev) and many local Communist leaders (such as Sultanzadeh). The ideological embryo of Stalin's struggle against Trotsky, Zinoviev, and other dogmatic "leftists," which came to a head in the 1926-1929 debates on the method of achieving revolution in China and later during the antifascist struggle in Europe, was thus present during the Gilan revolution, as was Stalin's support for united fronts. The ideological struggle in the Persian Communist Party was paralleled by a similar struggle among the Russian Bolsheviks. With Stalin's active support, Haydar entered Iran and attempted to form a second united front between the PCP and Kuchik. 32 In this period, Ehsanollah's government, probably prompted by a combination of internal discontent and external persuasion (from Haydar and others), abandoned its war communism policy. In the spring of 1921, the Rasht government substituted a "new economic policy" that, like its counterpart in the Soviet Union, relaxed the government's control of the economy. Under the new economic policy, the concepts of world revolution and class warfare were deemphasized: Restrictions on movement were eased; forcible requisition of food ceased; many of the mohajers in the bureaucracy were replaced by native Iranians. Class terror and antireligious propaganda were greatly reduced, and religious sentiments were even appealed to in the fight against the "enemies of Islam." Government propaganda once again emphasized nationalism and the fight against the British. 33 While Haydar's influence in Ehsanollah's new policy was pronounced, so was Ehsanollah's propensity to imitate Soviet policies. Haydar attempted to moderate the policies of the Rasht government in order to bring Kuchik back into alliance. Eventually, on May 8, 1921, after months of mediation among Haydar, Rasht, and Kuchik's faction, Kuchik agreed to join the Rasht government for combined action against the central government and Great Britain. 34 This May government's composition was significantly different from that of the red commissariat: Members of Sultanzadeh's faction of the PCP were excluded; of the five members of the "revolutionary committee" leading the new government, two (Kuchik and Mirza Mohammadi) were from Gilan, and four (those mentioned plus Ehsanollah and Khalu Gorban) were native Iranians. Haydar, the only Communist Party member, had spent much of his life in Iran. (It is unclear where Haydar was born, but he was a Russian citizen in 1917.) Although Ehsanollah remained in the new government, Haydar regarded him as an "adventurist" and minimized his power. 35 To give the revolutionary republic a solid social base, Haydar made a

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sincere attempt to attract the peasants, the largest and most important segment o f the population. T o do this, it was necessary to undo the damage that the previous g o v e r n m e n t ' s p o l i c i e s had done to the popularity o f the G i l a n Republic. 3 6 Haydar presided o v e r a new "Peasants' Council o f Jangal," which taught literacy, health, and sanitation, and educated the peasants in the party's new program. Haydar's educational activities, unlike Ehsanollah's, w e r e not compulsory. P l a y s were presented that stressed the fight against the British w h i l e they

attempted to instill G i l a n i w o r k e r s and peasants with

class

consciousness. Haydar created a voluntary Jamiyate Se'adate Nasvan, Society for Female Salvation, which conducted a literacy campaign and founded a special newspaper for women. 3 7 B y the late summer o f 1921, there were indications that the rural and urban population o f Gilan was receptive to Haydar's program. 3 8 On August 4, 1921, Haydar was confident enough to proclaim Gilan (again) a Soviet Republic. Despite the name, this Soviet Republic was different from Ehsanollah's; in fact, Ehsanollah was excluded from the new

government

altogether. T h e radical content in Ehsanollah's revolutionary program was likewise banished. The new government declared: T h e aims o f the revolutionary committee include the establishment f r e e d o m , struggle

against the shah and monarchy,

and f i g h t

of

against

counterrevolutionaries. Simultaneously the government of the committee considers it a duty to g i v e c o m f o r t to the masses and . . . stop excesses and fanaticism in the affairs o f the government, which would only

Kuchik

benefit

anarchists. 39

was the president o f the commissariat;

Khalu G o r b a n was

the

commissar o f war; and Haydar was the commissar for foreign affairs. Another Gilani, Sar K o s h , a friend o f Kuchik, replaced Ehsanollah. T h r e e of the

five

members o f the new united front members w e r e native Gilanis, and Kuchik's "bourgeois nationalist" Jangalis held the leadership. T h e revolution's course had been changed, reverting to a national liberation movement, in accord with the policy Haydar had outlined in the Octobcr 1920 P C P congress. Haydar did, however, insist on land reform while the struggle with Tehran continued. A s w e have seen, this was one area w h e r e he agreed, i f only tactically, with Sultanzadeh. Haydar's proposed broad alliance o f classes in the struggle for national liberation excluded the large landowners; Kuchik, w h o had many allies among them, argued that their support was essential in achieving national independence and opposed land reform in this early stage o f the national struggle. 40 T h e P C P under Haydar's leadership sought to reach b e y o n d Gilan.

A

Communist committee was established in T a b r i z , where Khiabani's revolt had recently been crushed. W h i l e alive, Khiabani had rejected an alliance with the red Rasht government. A s mentioned in Chapter 3, Khiabani was alienated by the radical social transformation advocated by the P C P in the early stages o f the Gilan revolution and was intent o n preserving Azerbaijan's autonomy. 4 1 It

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH C E N T U R Y

seems that Haydar tried to unite the scattered remnants of Khiabani's Democratic Party. He founded peasant committees around Tabriz, Ardabil, and Sarab. 42 In the short time before the suppression of the Gilan revolution, Haydar's overtures had only limited success, but his activities did lay the groundwork for some noteworthy revolutionary activity in Azerbaijan. M a j o r Lahuti, the left Democrat who had attended the Baku congress along with Haydar and Sultanzadeh, led a revolt in Tabriz against Reza Khan's military and political centralization a few months after the collapse of the Rasht government. The remaining Azerbaijani Democrats and the Communist cells Haydar had established in Tabriz supported Lahuti. Together, these groups administered Tabriz much as revolutionary committees had done in previous periods. After Reza Khan's army (assisted by Kurdish tribesmen) suppressed this revolt, Lahuti was given asylum in the Soviet Union, where he became a distinguished revolutionary literary figure. 43 In the last months of the Gilan Republic, Colonel Pesyan, a distinguished Azeri Democrat, led a revolt in nearby Khorasan. Pesyan had commanded the Iranian forces during World War I, in the national defense government of Qum, against the tsarist troops; both Ehsanollah and Lahuti had fought under his c o m m a n d . He w a s e x t r e m e l y popular for his literary talents and humanitarianism as well as military and administrative abilities. Pcsyan's revolt, like Kuchik's, seems to have been directed against the corruption and foreign domination of the successive governments in Tehran. As in Khiabani's revolt, Pesyan's principal support came from the bourgeoisie of his province. He gained popularity for refusing to admit the Bakhtiari governor sent to Mashad, Khorasan's capital, by the Tehran government; the large contingent of Bakhtiari troops that accompanied this governor alarmed the local population. Pesyan (like Lahuti) also objected to Reza Khan's dictatorial attempts to unify all armed forces under his own command. With local Democrats in Khorasan and a number of Azeri Democrats, Pesyan formed the Komiteh Melliye Khorasan—the National Committee of Khorasan—that in turn created an army of Khorasan. The national committee initiated administrative reforms, such as regulating the budget and purging corrupt officials. Pesyan singled out "reactionary aristocrats" as the enemies of Iran's true progress and independence. Local Communists assisted Pesyan's government. 4 4 Pesyan, however, was so concerned with exclusively Khorasani affairs that he had rejected Ehsanollah's offer of alliance. Although he initiated reforms in housing and education that were designed to benefit the lower classes, Pesyan was not a class revolutionary and was disturbed by the events in Gilan. 4 5 The largely Azeri composition of Pesyan's government, in turn, disturbed the Mashad bazaar and cost him the bourgeois support he had initially enjoyed. After Pesyan's death in a skirmish with Kurdish tribesmen supporting the central government, Reza Khan's army suppressed the Khorasani Democrats without much local opposition. 46

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89

The Fall of the Gilan Republic After his expulsion in August 1921, Ehsanollah marched on Tehran without the Gilan government's permission. A government force led by Major Fazlollah Khan (the future General Zahedi) routed 3,000 revolutionary troops. This disaster irreversibly weakened the credibility and military strength of the Gilan Soviet, revealing the revolutionary government's inability to control its fragmented army and the tenuity of the united front. Personal jealousy, an endemic feature of Iranian politics, manifested itself in its most dangerous form. 47 Haydar became a victim of his dispute with Kuchik over land refomi. On September 29, 1921, the right Jangalis, alleging that he was plotting to kill Kuchik, killed Haydar. Kuchik's allies then completed a rightist coup d'état, destroyed the Communist headquarters in Rasht, and, after heavy fighting, occupied the Gilani capital. 48 Meanwhile, conservative Shahsavar. tribesmen implemented the fatwa that had been declared against the Gilan Soviet. They fought all of the factions in the Gilan Republic. 49 Reza Khan and Qavam were well aware of the internal differences in the Gilan Soviet and exacerbated them by carrying on separate negotiations with the right Jangalis. By the time the Soviet troops withdrew in October 1921, the faction-rent Gilan Soviet had lost its revolutionary potential; this in itself was certainly a factor in Soviet withdrawal. While Stalin and Zinoviev (in their very different ways) continued to support the revolutionary movement in Gilan, Lenin and Chicherin favored abandoning the remnants of the republic in order to prevent chaos in Iran. 50 Following the Soviet withdrawal, the British were willing to finance the Iranian Army's expenses in crushing the Gilan Soviet. 51 Qavam, having lured Kuchik into negotiations that were bound to alarm the PCP, refused to consider his request for local autonomy. After the rightist coup had saved Reza Khan the trouble of fighting a unified force, the newly consolidated Iranian Army marched on Gilan. The left PCP advocated a determined resistance to Reza's forces, while the right PCP (formerly led by Haydar) objected that continued struggle would lead to Iran's disintegration. 52 Reza Khan captured Rasht in late October 1921. During the revolution, Gilanis had become so alienated by Ehsanollahs activities that they were receptive to the Cossacks they had helped Kuchik fight a few years before. With little support from its population, the Gilan Republic collapsed, and Kuchik froze to death while fleeing. Ehsanollah embarked for the Soviet Union from Enzeli. Khalu Gorban and his Shi'ite Kurds surrendered to the central government, which assigned them to fight Simko's Sunni Kurds in northern Kurdestan. Khalu Gorban was killed in a skirmish in 1922.53 The revolutionary government's failure was due primarily to its failure to unite the Gilani population under its leadership. In its early stages, the Jangal movement was supported by a "national myth"—the freeing of Iran from foreign

90

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

domination—that did unite Gilani society and mobilize the peasantry. Ehsanollah's government did not abandon this original national myth but adopted new elements—class warfare and antireligious propaganda—that separated Gilani society from the revolutionary regime. Instead of mass assimilation, the red government's antagonistic approach created mass alienation. Ehsanollah and the left PCP changed Kuchik's national "revolution from below" to a "revolution from above." The dogmatic radicalism of Ehsanollah's mohajers did not reinforce Kuchik's national myth. The entrance of Kurds and mohajers from other parts of Iran and from the Caucasus created ethnic segmentation in Gilan that had not previously existed there; eyewitnesses of the Gilan revolution noted that racial tensions contributed to the Gilanis' rejection of the red government's progams. 54 The radical revolutionaries failed to appreciate the importance of the peasants' political culture. Religious sentiments as well as xenophobia were aroused against Ehsanollah's government. Haydar showed a greater appreciation for culture and religion as social forces to be reckoned with, attempting to moderate the red government's policies and to appeal to the nationalist sentiments that had unified the Jangal movement; however, he did not have time to regain the mass support that the red government had lost. The bourgeoisie, which had hoped to regain its position as a result of renewed trade with Russia and the expulsion of the British, had also been alienated. While both Sultanzadeh and Haydar were willing to ally temporarily with some segments of the bourgeoisie, these two differed sharply on where to draw the line between the Communists' potential allies and their class enemies. Sultanzadeh was willing to ally only with the petty bourgeoisie and insisted on Communist leadership of this minimal united front; Haydar was willing to join with broad segments of the national bourgeoisie and even to surrender temporary leadership to this class. The Gilani bourgeoisie, having concluded from the actions of the left PCP that communism was ultimately directed against their class interests, were leery of the alliance Haydar offered. It may be assumed that the bourgeois reformist leaders in Azerbaijan and Khorasan had similar motives for rejecting a united front with the Rasht government. The dilemma of the alliance with the bourgeoisie is still a serious concern for Communist writers and policymakers. 55 Like the rest of Gilani society in the revolutionary period, the leadership was fragmented. Differences of political socialization manifested themselves in their policies: Kuchik was a constitutionalist Gilani member of the Moderate Party whose education was religious; Ehsanollah was a leftist Azeri member of the Democratic Party who had been heavily influenced by the doctrines of anarchism in Europe. Azeris were notable for their radicalism; the radical Pishevari and the pragmatic Haydar, like Ehsanollah and many members of the PCP, were Azerbaijanis. Even the radical Armenian theoretician Sultanzadeh was born in Azerbaijan. Haydar, Pishevari, and

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Sultanzadeh were all personally acquainted with the Russian revolutionary leaders, which emphasized the extent to which the Soviets influenced the formation of their ideology and tactics. Haydar had met Stalin in Alexandropol while studying engineering; Stalin's ideological influence on Haydar's theses, as we have seen, was p r o n o u n c e d . K u c h i k had no c o m p a r a b l e political socialization; his contacts were with religious pan-Islamists in Iran and elsewhere. Unlike the Azeris who had been exposed to the Russian political milieu, Kuchik was a reformer who wanted to free Iran from foreign domination; he considered all economic classes potential allies. For the Azeris and the PCP in the Gilan revolution, even for Haydar, a national revolution was only a step toward social revolution. Within the P C P there were two tactical approaches based on differing interpretations of Marxism. Sultanzadeh and his faction, the left PCP, wanted to wage class warfare while the national liberation war was conducted. Haydar and the right P C P gave priority to the national liberation m o v e m e n t . This ideological friction, combined with the differences between Ehsanollah's left Jangalis and Kuchik's right Jangalis, made it impossible for the Gilan Soviet to have a coherent policy based on a unified ideology. The friction between the left and right wings of the P C P was exacerbated, but not caused, by the friction between Stalin and Orzhonikidze on the one hand, and Zinoviev and Mdivani on the other, within the Soviet Communist Party. These factions in the Soviet Union disagreed on the proper methods of achieving revolution in Gilan and hence supported opposite sides in the struggle within the PCP. As in the Gilan Soviet, there was political segmentation in Azerbaijan and Khorasan, partly attributable to class ideology and partly to ethnic differences. Azeri leaders in Khorasan and Gilan were not accepted by the people they sought to lead. 5 6 The provincial attitudes of many local leaders gave them a stronger identity with their province or ethnic group than with Iran as a whole, which alienated Iranian nationalists who had previously supported these movements. Many nationalist leaders, notably Ayatollah Mudarres, had hoped that the revolts, p a r t i c u l a r l y in Gilan, w o u l d strengthen Iran against foreign interference. 5 7 Later, they became hostile when they came to perceive revolts as threats to Iran's existence as a nation. 58 As we shall see, in 1946 Mossadegh and other nationalist leaders went through a similar evolution in their perceptions of the revolutions in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. It is important to remember that popular sentiment had launched the Jangal movement in the first place; it was not a Soviet creation but had begun as a nationalist struggle against foreign domination. The collapse of the central government's state machinery, combined with the intense foreign intervention during and after World War I, resulted in a nationalist revolution with peasant participation. T h e Jangali peasant nationalist revolution then found an ally in the Soviet Union. Time and the political differences and upheavals within Gilan prevented the creation of viable administrative machinery. T h e political

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inexperience of the P C P and other revolutionary leaders was partly responsible for this failure. The achievements of the Gilan Soviet, however, should not be dismissed. Even Ehsanollah's government remedied some serious ailments in Gilani society. Unemployment was greatly reduced; a literacy campaign was launched; and an attempt was made to establish a national bank. Ethnic minorities, such as Armenians, were permitted to use their native tongue in their schools. For the first time in Iranian history, there was attempted land reform and an effort to give the peasants communal responsibility. Under Haydar's direction, the government took literacy and sanitation campaigns to the villages. Also for the first time in Iran, peasant unions were established. Attempts were made to improve the status of w o m e n . S o m e of the cultural and educational organizations created in this period survived for decades 5 9 and all would be repeated in Azerbaijan; some would be present in Kurdistan, also, in 1946. Because of the internal disintegration in Gilan and throughout Iran, as well as the foreign policy considerations described in the previous chaptcr, the Soviets discontinued their support for the Gilan Soviet; continued support would have prompted the British to divide Iran politically and territorially. 60 (Similar considerations probably motivated the evolution of Soviet policy toward the revolutionary governments in northern Iran in 1946.) The Gilan Soviet collapsed shortly after Russian troops withdrew, demonstrating that it had lost the support of the masses. Its fall was a stepping stone in the rise of Reza Khan, and in his use of the army as an arbiter of power. For next twenty years, Iran witnessed the emergence of a strong, centralized military dictatorship. Only one m a j o r agrarian revolt, that of Lahak Khani Bavand in Khorasan in 1926, emerged under Reza Shah, and it was immediately crushed. 6 1 Northern Iran became a special target for military oppression. A similar pattern was to emerge in 1946, when General Razmara, the commander of the Iranian forces against the revolutionaries in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, increased his own power and that of the army as a result of his military victories.

6

The Reign of Reza Shah

When Iran's disintegration and governmental collapse had reached such a level that the administration and army existed in name only, and we had become a laughing-stock to the foreigners, . . . the strong leadership of our Lord General, the commander of our armed forces, Reza Khan, created a strong, unified national army, which restored the independence of Iran, reasserted the authority of the government by suppressing provincial and tribal revolts, and reformed the government apparati. Under Reza Khan's leadership, our country will enjoy internal security, progress, and prosperity. —Two-hundred fifty-six merchants and guildsmen o f Tehran bazaar ( 1 9 2 2 open letter)

Reza Shah eliminated all the thieves and bandits in Iran, and made his countrymen realize that henceforth there would be only one thief in Iran. —British MP (1946)

This chapter will illustrate the evolution of Iranian society and foreign policy under Reza Shah and examine how this evolution affected popular sentiment throughout Iran, with special emphasis on Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. Developments in internal and foreign policy will be examined in three chronological stages. In the initial stage of charismatic leadership, 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 6 , Reza was widely perceived as a modernizing reformer; during the transitional period, 1926-1934, he turned to a more traditional style of rule, consolidating his power; and in the final stage, 1 9 3 4 - 1 9 4 1 , the shah, influenced by European fascism, accelerated the centralization of power and tied his emphasis on Iran's past glories to his own authoritarianism. Charismatic Leadership: 1921-1926 In the early years of Reza Khan's rise to power, he was seen as a modernizing reformer who could restore Iran's pride, unity, and independence. The reformist intelligentsia rallied behind him, perceiving him as a stabilizing, nationalist 93

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force. All classes were worn out by the fratricidal period of the Constitutional Revolution, World War I, and the revolts in Gilan and elsewhere. Aristocrats, ulama, merchants, and workers were all exhausted by years of internal warfare and party bickering and welcomed the respite a charismatic leader offered. After Reza's abdication, the Azeri historian Ahmad Kasravi explained that "the existence of many autonomous power centers in Iran, which had led to a complete lack of security and the virtual disintegration of the country, was the chief reason that the people of Iran supported the establishment of a dictatorship." 1 A declaration Reza Khan made shortly after his February 1921 coup d'état shows the elements of this early appeal: Our aim is to establish a . . . strong government, which will create a powerful and respected army, because a strong army is the only means of saving the country from the miserable stale of its affairs. We want to establish a government that will not discriminate among Gilanis, Tabrizis, and Kermanis. We want to establish a government that will not be an instrument of foreign politics. 2

The reformist intellectuals, in particular, who had led the Constitutional Revolution saw in Reza the embodiment of constitutional ideals. Years later, Hassan Tagizadeh, formerly a leading member of the Democratic Party, explained: "A great leader appeared and took the destiny of the country in his hands," to work toward "a great many of the ideals of which the now dead nationalists of the first [Constitutional Revolution] period once dreamed." 3 The widespread support Reza enjoyed in this period among modernizing intellectuals was analogous to Ataturk's support in Turkey. Reza's rise to absolute power was also aided by the disintegration of both leading parties, the Democrats and the Moderates. The Democratic leaders who remained in Iran after World War I had, as previously described, split into organizational and antiorganizational factions. The antiorganizational faction faded into obscurity, and the organizationalists never recovered the Democrats' original status. The Moderate Party likewise disintegrated. Former Moderates and Democrats joined two new parties: the Socialist Party and the Eslah-ta-Laban or Reformist Party. The new division centered around disputes arising out of the Russian Revolution. The Socialists, led by Suleiman Mirza Iskandari, advocated a pro-Soviet foreign policy. The Reformists, led by Mudarres, advocated a more neutral course. Mudarrcs had advocated the "negative equilibrium" foreign policy approach, later made famous by Mossadegh, as early as the Gilan revolution. He was an outspoken opponent of the increase of Soviet influence through the military clauses in the 1921 Irano-Soviet Treaty, much as Mossadegh would be a critic of the Irano-Soviet oil agreement in 1946.4 In internal policy, the Socialists, like the Democrats before them, advocated an egalitarian, secular society with a broad spectrum of constitutional and

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economic rights. As mentioned in previous chapters, the Socialists formed a bloc with the Communists after the Gilan episode. The ideological influence of the Communists on the Socialist Party platform was reflected in the demands to abolish private ownership. The Socialists were particularly active in the northern provinces, where they joined in promoting the trade unions established by Communists near the end of the Gilan revolution. The two figures dominating these trade unions were the Gilani Reza Rusta and Pishevari, both veterans of the Gilan revolution. They persuaded existing but ineffective unions, such as that of the teachers, to join them and extended their influence to the oilfields of the south. 5 In the early 1920s these unions organized several strikes, including a famous protest among printers against censorship of the press. 6 The Reformists, many of whom were former Moderates, were less secular and less radical. Their internal policy was one of gradual, limited reform, much like that of the earlier Moderate Party. Merchants, aristocrats, and ulama, alienated by the radicalism and secularism in the Socialist program (as well as by Communist actions in Gilan), supported the Reformists. An electoral law sponsored by the Democrats and passed by the Second Majlis paradoxically gave the Reformists a majority in the Fourth Majlis and a powerful minority in the Fifth. This law guaranteed universal male suffrage regardless of literacy and class, which permitted the local khans and ulama to rally the uneducated lower classes. The Reformists, however, despite their strength in the Majlis, lacked organization in the provinces. 7 In the Fourth Majlis, Reza Khan initially allied himself with the Reformists, who benefited from this alliance when Reza supported many politicians, including Qavam and Pirniya, whom this party also supported. The military leader courted the favor of the religious masses by attending one of the highest Shi'ite religious ceremonies, Ashura, with his Cossack Brigade and beating himself to show his devotion. This activity won the praises of the ulama, who were very influential in the Reformist Party as well as in the country at large. 8 Reza's foreign policy, which seemed designed to protect Iranian independence and neutrality against both the Soviet Union and Britain, also appealed to the Reformists because of their emphasis on equilibrium. The Reformists increased Reza's military authority by increasing the military budget. Perhaps because of their own weakness in the provinces, they permitted him to put many provinces under martial law. 9 After his liaison with the Reformists had served his purposes, Reza formed an alliance with the Socialists to remove Qavam and Pimiya from the political arena. Using this new alliance and the military, Reza manipulated the elections to the Fifth Majlis and produced a working majority composed of Socialists with the Tajaddod or Progress (also called Independent Democratic) Party. The Socialist leader Iskandari praised Reza and referred to him as "a bourgeois national leader." Like most Soviet policymakers, Iskandari applauded the resurgence of nationalism in Iran in the person of Reza, and advocated the

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creation of a "bourgeois-democratic dictatorship." 10 The program of the Progress Party, which formed an alliance with the Socialists, was emphatically nationalistic, calling for the replacement of foreign capital with domestic capital, the replacement of minority languages throughout Iran by Persian, and the creation of a well-disciplined army. The members of this party were mostly young, European-educated men, and included Ali Akbar Davar, Abdul Hussein Teymurtash, and Sayyid Muhammad Tadayon. The constitutionalist Mohammad Ali Zuka al-Mulk, hereafter referred to by his Pahlavi-era name, Furoughi, was also associated with Tajaddod. These four men played vital roles during Reza's reign. 11 In the Fifth Majlis, Reza ensured that Mustofi, who was associated with the Socialists as well as the Progress Party, was prime minister. With apparent sincerity, Reza advocated the creation of an Iranian republic, with himself as president. Both Socialists and Progress members applauded this move as a step toward a bourgeois national state. Ahmad Shah had already left for Europe; he insisted that he was a "constitutional monarch" and refused to back any political faction that opposed Reza. By his strict adherence to constitutional forms, he became an obstacle to the establishment of the strong, centralized government that many Iranian nationalists sought; the last Qajar shah alienated any support he might have had in Iran for his monarchy. 12 The ulama, however, were alarmed. Neighboring Turkey had declared itself a republic with no official religion; in the eyes of many, a republic was inseparably linked to secularism. Protesters in Tehran demonstrated in front of the parliament building, proclaiming: "We are the people of the Qur'an, we don't want a republic." 13 Mudarres led the antirepublican forces in the Majlis and forced Reza to resign as prime minister. Unfortunately, Mudarres had great ideological and personal differences with the Socialists, carryovers from the Constitutional Revolution and World War I, when he had been a leading Moderate and Iskandari had led the Democratic Party. Their attitudes on foreign policy and the relationship between state and ulama were radically different. This opposition enabled Reza to pit one group against the other. The divisions in the Majlis prevented any unified opposition to his increasing autocracy, and he skillfully appealed to the deputies' convictions and idiosyncracies to use the Majlis divisions in his favor. 14 With the support of the army and the Progress and Socialist parties, he returned to power. Seeing the direction in which the political mood of the nation was turning, Reza abandoned his support for a republic, agreeing that republicanism was against the principles of Shi'i Islam. In exchange for his rejection of "the ideology of republicanism," he secured the Reformists' promise not to champion the Qajar dynasty; this compromise paved the way for Reza Khan's establishment of his own dynasty. 15 The Socialist and Progress parties agreed to appoint him supreme commander-in-chief of all armed forces. Mudarres and the Reformists, believing that Reza could be controlled, assented to this

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nomination, which usurped the traditional prerogatives of Ahmad Shah, who, according to the constitution, was still the theoretical commander of the Iranian military. 16 In the Fifth Majlis, Mossadegh was almost alone in protesting Reza's attempts to gain the throne. In 1925, during discussions about the future of the Qajar dynasty, Mossadegh asked, "Was it to achieve dictatorship that people bled their lives away in the Constitutional Revolution? . . . I do agree that Reza Khan has performed services for the country. However, changing the constitution is not really beneficial to the country." Augmenting Reza's powers, he stated, would lead to a dictatorship, in which foreign and internal policies would be determined without parliamentary consultations. 17 Although the Socialists applauded the deposition of the Qajars, they were not enthusiastic about the establishment of a Pahlavi dynasty. Rather naively, Iskandari tried to temper Reza's monarchy by suggesting that the monarchical succession be electoral: [ A l t h o u g h I have been one of the main supporters of [Reza] Pahlavi, b e c a u s e of the s e r v i c e s he has rendered to the country, such as d e s t r o y i n g tribal f e u d a l i s m , e s t a b l i s h i n g security in the nation, and centralizing the government . . . based on the program of my party and m y i d e o l o g i c a l c o n v i c t i o n s , the right of c h o o s i n g the nation's leader b e l o n g s only to the nation. Therefore the nation should d e c i d e on the crown prince and the shah. 1 8

Because of his opposition to the laws of succession, Iskandari absented himself, along with two other Socialists, from the Constituent Assembly that met in 1925 to "elect" Reza as shah. 19 Not until after the 1941 Allied intervention in Iran would any legislative body dare to oppose Reza Khan. During the years of his dictatorship, Reza's programs won him support, both within Iran and among the Great Powers. He emphasized the need to restore the past glories of Persia; and Persian literature during his rise to the throne reflected this aspiration. A famous secularist revolutionary poet, Aref-i Qazvini, a former supporter of Pesyan's revolt 20 who now supported Reza Khan, wrote: The winds of Sardar Sepah [the Lord General, a title of R e z a Khan] will revive this country from the verge of destruction. As long as the mullahs and the Qajars remain, w h o k n o w s what dishonor will befall the country of Cyrus? . . . If the crown and throne of Anushiravan and Jam had any honor, this beggar king [Ahmad Shah] has destroyed it. . . . A l w a y s the p e o p l e were the arbiters of the nation's destiny; it was the p e o p l e w h o made Fereydoun and Ghobad their kings. 2 1

The clear implication was that Reza, too, was a leader chosen by popular acclaim to reassert Iran's pride after a period of decadence.

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Rcza Shah's coronation provided many examples of the monarch's initial appeal. The new ruler reiterated his determination to advance the nation while respecting Islam but notwithstanding his protestations of religious devotion, he plucked the crown from the hands of the high clergyman and placed it on his own head in imitation of Napoleon. In this action he paved the way for years of restricting the clergy's power. 22 After Reza crowned himself, his prime minister, Furoughi, spoke of Iran's glorious past, particularly the Sassani (pre-Islamic) period. He compared Reza to many of Iran's shahs who had emerged and led the nation to glory after periods of decay: "Your Majesty, the Iranian nation realizes that today a shah who is of the pure Iranian race [the Qajars were Turkmans] has ascended to the throne . . . and under his leadership, Iran will again be a secure and strong nation." He referred to the Sassani-style crown Reza chose in place of the Qajar crown as a symbol of Iran's rejuvenation. 23 Hassan Khan Isfandiyari, the president of the parliament, referred gratefully to the unusual internal security the country had enjoyed under Reza. Unlike Furoughi, Isfandiyari stressed Reza's appeal to Iran's diverse ethnic groups: "Your Majesty, in this country, which is made of many different races and scattered tribes, of villagers and city-dwellers,. . . people arc sending their gratitude for the internal security that has been established under your leadership in a short period of time." Agriculture, industry, and mining would progress under such a secure government, leading the nation to prosperity and independence. 24 Isfandiyari's speech shows why members of all classes, but particularly the ambitious middle class, supported Reza's government in this crucial stage. As Bahar astutely explained: "It was the disillusioned public opinion and especially that of the middle class, starving for the establishment of a strong, centralized government, that encouraged and prepared Reza Khan's rise to power. The middle class saw in Reza Khan the realization of its goal." 25 Reza succeeded in establishing internal stability. In addition to suppressing the revolts in Gilan, Khorasan, and Azerbaijan, in 1922 he suppressed a revolt of Kurdish tribesmen led by Simko. Simko, a Shakkak chief in Kurdistan, had terrorized Azeris, Assyrians, and Armenians in Western Azerbaijan since World War I. His revolt, while it had overtones of a struggle for Kurdish autonomy, was primarily a tribal affair designed to enhance his own power. 26 Reza, in turn, used his victories over the local revolts to enhance his military rule, stationing garrisons throughout the provinces, especially in the north. Military rule in Kurdistan was particularly harsh. To prevent a resurgence of tribal revolts, Reza disarmed the most troublesome tribes—Lurs, Baluchis, Bakhtiaris, and Qashqais, as well as Kurds—forcibly settling many who had previously been nomadic. Tribal chiefs who were not executed were brought to Tehran and placed under supervision or otherwise removed from their tribes. 27 Most Iranians received this suppression of tribes gratefully. Even those who opposed Reza's dictatorship (including Mudarres and Mossadegh) applauded this policy as a major contribution to the nation's internal security. Clearly,

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however, the manner in which the tribes were suppressed added substantially to Reza's power. Reza unified the armed forces under his personal command. The Cossacks, gendarmes, and police, along with other military formations, were all amalgamated into the new National Iranian Army, with a single uniform and a single administrative code. This freed the armed factions from control by provincial authorities and Tehrani politicians and made them answerable to Reza. Military commanders, loyal to Reza, usurped the authority of the administrative governors and controlled the elections to ensure that his supporters were predominant in the Fifth Majlis and the Constituent Assembly. Mossadegh resigned as governor of Azerbaijan because of administrative interference from Reza's military cronies. 28 Reza established a military hierarchy subservient to him. Through the novel device of paying the troops on a regular basis, he gave the army a social status it had never before enjoyed and made it loyal to him. This explains the extent to which he was able to rely on the army for support during the years of his rise to the throne and afterward. 29 With the army unified under his command, Reza was able to unify the government as well. Subjected to military overrule, provincial authorities were in no position to challenge Reza's authority. Iran's taxation and budget were put on a sound financial footing with the aid of the U.S. mission led by Arthur Millspaugh, who had come to Iran in 1922 at Qavam's initiative. 30 The support Reza received from the two Great Powers interacted with the internal support he had obtained. By presenting himself as a strong, nationalist leader who would preserve Iran's independence at the expense of either power, he managed to win the applause of both Britain and the Soviet Union. The British believed Reza could be an effective bulwark against communism. According to Vincent Sheean, as the British now wished to extricate themselves from Iran's internal politics, they were pleased by Reza's strengthening of the Iranian government. They acquiesced in U.S. advisor Millspaugh's reorganization of Iranian finances, on the grounds that this would make Iran's government more viable. 31 When Reza suppressed Sheikh Khazal of Mohammerah—Britain's old ally—in 1924, the Soviets were convinced that Reza was an effective bulwark against imperialism and believed he was destroying British hegemony in Iran. The secular, national state Reza advocated during his alliance with the Socialists convinced the Soviets that he was "a nationalist, an enemy of religious fanaticism, an enemy of the feudal khans and capitalists and of British interference in Iran." 32 Because of their perceptions, Britain and the Soviet Union competed to recognize the Pahlavi dynasty. The British were the first to recognize Reza as ruler after the Fifth Majlis's decision to depose the Qajars; the Soviets followed suit the next day. 33 Reza's foreign policy, in this period, sought to encourage equilibrium: In light of the strong British position in Iran at the time, this involved encouraging the Soviet Union's support. Like his later counterpart,

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General Razmara, Reza made various symbolic gestures (including his close ties to the Socialist Party) to indicate an inclination toward the Soviet Union. When Reza was selected as king by the Constituent Assembly in December, the Foreign Ministry of Iran had the British ambassador lead the diplomats congratulating him on his ascension to the throne; at the coronation in April 1926, the Foreign Ministry had the Soviet ambassador lead the diplomatic corps congratulating the shah. 34

Early Imperial Iran: 1926-1934 After Reza's coronation, the state was increasingly identified with the ruler. Traditionalism and patrimonialism—and not any ideological blueprint—guided his rule. While rationalizing tendencies were evident in the first Pahlavi monarch's reforms, the shah avoided routinizing government work to an extent that would impede his personal exercise of power. His loyal supporter, General Hassan Arfa, wrote: I was an e x e c u t i v e far removed from the level of command, but nevertheless on account of his direct interest in every detail of all branches of national activity, and particularly of the army, I w a s frequently in direct contact with him. My life, my work, my happiness or distress depended directly on him. 3 5

Indeed, the entire country depended directly on Reza; the shah was too insecure to delegate authority. To consolidate his personal power, the first Pahlavi monarch reduced parliament and the cabinet to rubber stamps. In 1927, he suppressed the Communist and Socialist parties; Communist leaders were imprisoned or forced to flee abroad. All other parties were soon dismantled. Mudarres, Mossadegh, Pimiya, and other prominent political figures were deprived of their Majlis seats and denied any part in public life. Qavam, who had been sent into exile for allegedly conspiring against Reza, was permitted to return to Iran but was kept under close surveillance and prevented from participating in politics. 36 Even the Progress Party, which had been unstinting in its support of the new shah, was replaced by Iraneh No (New Iran), and later by the Hizb-i Taraqqi or Progressive Party, an imitation of Mussolini's Fascist and Ataturk's Republican parties. By 1932, however, Reza Shah feared that even this subservient group could become a focus of opposition and outlawed it on the pretext that it promoted dangerous "republican sentiments." 37 Reza Shah increasingly distrusted institutions, even seemingly loyal ones, that might threaten his power. However, he did not yet distrust the individuals who had brought him to power. He made the excellent adminstrator Davar minister of justice and, later, finance. He named Teymurtash, who was very

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close to him, minister of the court and appointed Tagizadeh ambassador to Britain. Jaifar Quli Khan Sardar Assad, a prominent Bakhtiari khan and the son of Haj Ali Quli Khan Sardar Assad who had fought for the Constitutional Revolution and helped depose Mohammad Ali Shah, became minister of war. Reza Shah trusted these men's judgment in their fields of expertise, and they all made important contributions to the formation of internal and foreign policies in this period. 38 Reza Shah's economic policy, at this time and later, has been aptly described by Amin Banani as characterized by "an appetite for industrialization far beyond the bounds of economic rationale, not for the sake of efficiency and welfare but as a symbol of prestige and status." This "indiscriminate imitation of the surface gloss of Western societies" 39 was rooted in what has been called a national inferiority complex. Violet Conolly commented in 1935: The powcrs-that-be in Tehran seem to regard machinery as a passport to equality with the greater nations of the world and as the only means of ridding themselves and their country of an inferiority complex produced by a long history of inertia, corruption, and backwardness. 4 0

Like the rest of the social system in this period, economic modernization centered around the shah's person. Partly out of distrust for the abilities of private Iranian citizens, and partly out of admiration for Ataturk's statist mercantilism, Reza Shah made the government the repository of all economic initiative. Every industrial plant built during his reign was owned either by the shah or by the Iranian government. State control of the economy centered all Iranian commerce in Tehran, causing distress in Iran's other traditional commercial centers, particularly in the north. Before Reza Shah, Tabriz had been a greater commercial center than Tehran, but this ceased to be the case. A. C. Edwards observed that "no person of consequence . . . could carry on his affairs without a seat in Tehran. Thus, the capital grew and prospered, but largely at the expense of the provinces." 41 Tehran received electricity, broad paved avenues, and a variety of public buildings; improvements in provincial cities were much more limited. Citizens of once-prosperous Azerbaijan felt short-changed by the shah's policies. 42 Reza established Tehran-centered monopolies—which the state cither controlled or awarded to favorite entrepreneurs—in sugar and tea (1925), opium (1928), tobacco (1929), and many other commodities. The import and export of all of these goods was controlled, and many were heavily taxed. Taxes on sugar, tobacco, and tea worsened the economic condition of the peasants, avid consumers of these commodities. Many of these monopolies were awarded to royal favorites and were poorly, often corruptly, administered; few were profitable, and most actually drained money out of the treasury. 43 Factories, including sugar and silk refineries, were established, but most of these were on

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the shah's royal estates, and most were run by military officers. Thus the shah used government development funds to enrich himself. 4 4 Reza Shah tried to limit foreign control of the Iranian economy. In 1928, the remaining capitulations were abrogated. Iran asserted its right to fix its c u s t o m s duties but never enacted protective tariffs to nurture its infant industry. 4 5 In 1930, a government act established a foreign-exchange control. The National Bank of Iran, or Bank-i Melli, was creatcd to make loans to industry at lower rates than had been current in the bazaar. The National Bank was designed as a tangible symbol of the country's financial integrity and replaced the (British) Imperial Bank in printing currency. However, unlike the traditional bazaari creditors, the National Bank did not grant loans to creditworthy bourgeois enterprises, but to the shah's pet projects and his relaives and associates. 46 The largest economic initiative of Reza Shah's rule was the Trans-Iranian Railroad, which connected Bandar Gaz on the Caspian to Bandar Shahpur in the Persian Gulf. The railroad was, like the rest of the shah's economic program, more a symbol of national pride and independence than an actual economic benefit to the country. Reza spent a half hour daily on railroad affairs and was proud to have financed it primarily from the tax on sugar and tea, without resorting to foreign loans that might increase foreign political influence in Iran. However, the railroad was a financial burden far out of proportion to its benefits. Money from the defense budget was required to supplement the sugar and tea tax. 47 An east-west railroad linking Iran's borders would have been much more useful to the economy than one with both termini on Iranian soil. 4 8 T h e purposes of the north-south line actually created were twofold: to cnrich the shah and to aid in internal policing. Ali Amini, an Iranian statesman and prime minister, summarized this dual purpose: "to connect the royal estates to the world market, and to consolidate the shah's grip on power in Iran, especially in the north. It was strategic in the sense that in the event of unrest in the north, it could be used to move troops there." 49 The railroad brought the produce of the Caspian provinces to the south for export; by 1940, the shah owned at least 3 million acres in that region—a majority of the agricultural territory in Gilan, Mazandaran, and Gorgan. 5 0 While the shah justified this policy as a means of reducing the Russian "stranglehold" on the northern economy and integrating the north into the Iranian economy, in fact it drained the north's wealth to the south, largely into the shah's coffers. 5 1 Because Reza Khan's military career had included suppressing revolts in the north, including the Gilan revolution, he was intent on nipping any further revolutions in the area, or hypothetical Soviet invasions, in the bud. 5 2 Reza Shah's administration also undertook widespread road construction. From 1925 on, 2 to 3 million dollars annually were allocated for highways and 17,000 miles of roads (almost all unpaved) constructed. However, like the railroad, their economic utility was confined to transporting goods from the

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royal estates. 53 They did improve communications with some of the more isolated towns; but here, again, Reza was more interested in promoting internal security than in creating national identification. The shah acquired his wealth, which included shares in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC) as well as the extensive landed property described above, through large-scale extortion, mostly from the tribal chieftains he dislocated. In 1926, according to Millspaugh, the shah was "already receiving 'gifts' of villages"—gifts clearly offered under duress. 54 The shah justified this shameless acquisition by citing the need for a "secure" belt in northern Iran that would protect the country from the "Bolshevist menace." According to General Arfa, Reza Shah "wanted to . . . see that the peasants strove to improve the quality and increase the quantity in order to raise their standard of living. He could only do this by a close and direct supervision which would not have been possible had these estates not belonged to him." 55 Arfa's statement illustrates the shah's fundamental belief that all change had to emanate from him. However and in fact, Reza Shah's improvement of the standard of living of the peasants on the land he owned was practically nonexistent; labor, grain, money, and horses were forcibly requisitioned from the villages. This feudalistic policy added to the peasants' misery, already accentuated by the sugar and tea taxes and Reza Shah's overall neglect of agriculture in favor of industry. 56 Social modernization programs accompanied Reza Shah's economic modernization. Like the economic modernization, however, his social programs were designed to promote security for the hierarchy that culminated in the shah. The army was the focus of the society the shah created: It was a tool for achieving internal stability as well as a symbol of the shah's power and Iranian independence; it was the vehicle through which he had advanced to the throne and the chief pillar of his reign. A third of the budget was devoted to the army; but many of the shah's modernizing economic programs, financed under other budgetary allocations, were also directed toward providing the army with transportation, uniforms, and equipment. 57 Shortly after his rise to the throne, the shah began enforcing universal male conscription, over the vehement objections of the mullahs who feared this might secularize the population. 58 By 1941, the shah claimed to be able to mobilize 400,000 troops. Unit commanders were ordered to teach elementary reading, writing, and arithmetic to the soldiers. However, since Iran still had over 90 percent illiteracy at the time of Reza Shah's abdication, it is obvious that this policy was not enforced. The common soldiers, mostly from rural areas, were mistreated and poorly paid during their two years of active service. Instead of a respect for the nation that had just extended itself into their lives, they developed resentment. 59 In addition to paying the onerous regressive taxes of the Pahlavi regime, men were forced to abandon their fields and families for two years; rural villages greatly feared the visits of the draft board. 60 There was an enormous emotional and financial gap between the common soldiers and their officers; a similar gap

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prevailed between junior and senior officers. The junior officers were mostly drawn from the lower middle class and genuinely saw the army as a means of social advancement. 61 However, their advancement, while genuine, was limited by the fact that the senior officer positions were filled by the shah's cronies. Furthermore, many young men who became junior officers out of an idealistic desire to serve their country became disillusioned with the army's oppressive tactics and the general social decay in Iran. Like the rest of the middle class, the junior officer corps grew frustrated with the limits the shah's system placed on their social and political aspirations. This helps explain why the middle class, particularly the disillusioned junior officers, became receptive to the PCP and later to the Tudeh Party. 62 By contrast with the great budgetary allocations given to the army, education was neglected. However, the shah recognized that the prevalent illiteracy and ignorance detracted from Iran's international prestige and took some small steps to improve the educational system. In 1927, he established three secondary schools, including one for women, to educate teachers. Beginning in 1928, one hundred students annually were sent abroad on government scholarships; 35 percent were designated as future teachers. By 1934, 200 foreign-educated students had become secondary and college tcachers. In that year, existing colleges in Tehran were combined and expanded into the new University of Tehran. Existing schools were organized into a hierarchical, centralized system, and new schools were built, mostly in metropolitan areas. Rural areas, which desperately needed elementary education, were practically ignored. Because of the Tehran-centric society created by the shah, the few teachers who were (almost forcibly) sent out to rural areas considered such appointments "as exile and made every effort to obtain a transfer, preferably to Tehran. . . . Of course," as Joseph Szyliowicz aptly observes, "the attempt to introduce educational reforms there would have roused opposition from landowners and others who had an interest in maintaining the social status quo." 63 As noted above, the shah was the largest landowner in the country and was himself interested in "maintaining the social status quo"; there were practically no schools on the royal estates. 64 Elementary education was neglected in favor of secondary and college-level education, reinforcing the traditional elitism of Iran's educational system and its role "as a supplier of manpower for the bureaucracy." 6 5 This role is evident from the fact that the majority of graduates of the veterinary and agricultural colleges were obliged to serve on the shah's estates; this service, while well paid, was involuntary. 66 The educational system, like all of the modernizing programs in this period, reflected the autocratic social system, promoting obedience to a hierarchical structure of authority that went all the way up to the shah. All schools and colleges stressed rote memorization of subjects divorced from practical applications and certainly did not encourage originality or independence of expression. Szyliowicz wrote: "The new schools were essentially designed to

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provide Reza Shah with the skills that he needed in such a way as not to threaten his position." 67 The authoritarianism in the schools, which extended to the internal structure of each class (where one student was chosen as "leader" by the principal), as well as the formalistic course material, reflected the shah's fundamental insecurity. The small percentage of students who managed to obtain admission to the colleges—which usually required some sort of "connections"— were increasingly frustrated by the strict limits on further opportunities for social advancement and political participation. Early in Reza Shah's reign, the bureaucracy could absorb most of these graduates; later on, however, the bureaucracy reached its saturation point, adding to the frustrations of the new, educated middle class, which was denied all avenues of political participation. The superabundance of college graduates, compared to the relatively small number of bureaucratic posts available, continued to be a major social problem in Iran in the post-World War II era. 68 In a further attempt to bolster Iran's international status and focus power in his own hands, the shah dissolved the old, decentralized Ministry of Justicc in 1927 and created a new, centralized ministry charged with preparing codes of law. He informed a gathering of lawyers and judges: "The prestige of a nation depends on the quality of its justice. I expect of you the most honorable conduct that will at once bring justice and prestige to our country." 69 Davar, who had a law degree from the University of Geneva, was entrusted with creating the new legal code. He set about his task conscientiously and placed educated Iranians in the new ministry. He emphasized the virtue of honesty; this emphasis had a salutary, though temporary, effect on corruption in the judicial system. 70 Probably owing to Davar's initiative, the judicial reforms were the most coherent attempt to rationalize society under Reza Shah. The new legal code, approved in 1928, made many concessions to the shari'a, or religious law, that had previously determined all legal issues. Laws relating to marriage and the family, for example, followed the shari'a in almost all specifics. However, at the same time, the new code definitely increased the powers of the secular courts over those of the religious courts. It defined the specific cases to be adjudicated by state and shari'a courts; the latter included most marital, family, and inheritance problems. Furthermore, no cases were to be referred to the shari'a courts "without authorization from state courts and the Attorney General." 71 In the course of Reza Shah's reign, the clergy's legal power was steadily reduced. In 1932, the clergy lost a particularly vital source of revenue when a law reassigned the registration of legal documents concerning property from the shari'a to the secular courts, forcing many members of the clergy to seek secular employment. 72 The judicial system reflected Reza Shah's desire to secularize and modernize Iranian society for the sake of international prestige and his own personal power. Had Reza's rule been a constitutional monarchy, Davar's legal reforms, with their emphasis on bureaucratic structure and routinization, might have

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rationalized the Iranian judiciary. However, as Reza Shah became increasingly avaricious and authoritarian, the "routinization" of procedures of the Ministry of Justice was increasingly interrupted by royal interference. The first Pahlavi monarch used the Ministry of Justice to legalize his acquisition of property and to jail political opponents and also people who were reluctant to "sell" their property to him. Judges had no independence of action but had to carry out the shah's whims, as relayed by military personnel, without questioning their legality. Given this atmosphere, it is not surprising that by the end of Reza Shah's reign, corruption and insecurity were rampant among judges and lawyers.

The Last Phase: 1934-1941 In the final phase of Reza Shah's reign, he increasingly considered the European Fascist states as potential allies in foreign policy and models for internal social and economic development. Even during the oil debaele of 1933, the German ambassador had encouraged the shah's premature assertion of economic independence from Britain. 73 Because Germany was a "third power" with a tradition of hostility toward both Britain and Soviet Russia, it was convenient for the shah to form close economic and political ties with that nation. Army officers sent to Germany for training returned to Iran and impressed the shah with their accounts of German military might. 74 Italy and Japan, though less important, were still regarded as friendly nations. Italy, Germany, and Japan all enjoyed a measure of modernity and international prestige without permitting such political freedoms as those by which the shah felt threatened. German propagandists noticed the shah's admiration for their system and did their best to promote it. As already noted, the shah had, from the earliest days of his reign, glorified Iran's "Persian" past. The Nazis seized on this emphasis as an illustration of the "Aryan" kinship of Persians and Germans and purported that their adoption of the Zoroastrian symbol, the swastika, was an emblem of the common interests of Persia and Germany. Many Iranians naively believed this propaganda. Shortly after Hitler came to power in 1933, the newspaper Irane Bastan (Ancient Iran) informed its readers: "The cardinal goal of the German nation is to attain its past glories by promoting national pride, creating a hatred of foreigners, and preventing the Jews and foreigners from embezzlement and treason. Our goals are certainly the same." 75 Under Reza Shah's police state, such remarks could not have been published without first passing through the hands of the government censor; therefore these statements indicate the shah's approval of Nazism. On March 12, 1934, at the urging of Iran's Berlin legation, the name Persia was offically changed to Iran, in order to magnify Iran's role as the birthplace of the Aryan race. 76 Glorification of the Aryan past peimeated Iranian culture: The National Bank building in Tehran was designed by a German architect in a neo-Persepolis style; the German architects

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who designed the railway station in Tehran adorned it with a (still existing) pattern of swastikas. 77 During Reza Khan's rise to power and even in the early years of his reign, association with the past had been used to mobilize mass support for a new Iranian nationalism. Now that Reza Shah had, in Nazi Germany, a European model that identified a glorification of the past with authoritarianism and racism, his affiliation with history became a means of perpetuating his own dictatorship and asserting the supremacy of Persian culture over minority cultures. His accelerating efforts to build a purely Persian national consciousness were described as the vahdat-i melli, or "national unity," campaign. Like almost all of the shah's policies, the harsh Persianization program was an attempt to win international prestige by attaining the superficial trappings of a modem state. The vahdat-i melli campaign was visible in education, the army, and literature. A Society for Public Guidance, modeled after Fascist and Nazi propaganda machines, spearheaded the effort to create a national consciousness through textbooks, mass publications, and radio broadcasts; the society also changed many Iranian place names suggestive of non-Persian origin. In 1935, an Iranian Academy was created and charged with "purifying" the Iranian language of Turkish and Arabic influence; considering that 40 percent of modem Farsi is derived from Arabic and Turkish, this task was impossible. Textbooks had to be completely rewritten with ersatz words replacing those of foreign origin; even military ranks were given new, "purified" Persian names. 78 The ethnic minorities in Iran, especially Azeris and Kurds, suffered greatly from this intensified Persian chauvinism. The north, traditionally the besteducated area in Iran, regressed under Reza Shah's Tehran-centric policies. No universities were built outside Tehran, and primary and secondary schools everywhere but Tehran were minimal. Education, publication, or even public speech in their native languages—Assyrian and Armenian as well as Azeri and Kurdish—was forbidden. The shah attempted to give the ethnically diverse nation a new, national identity connected to his own person. 79 This attempt backfired; many ethnic groups were handicapped by the closure of schools in their own languages. In the late 1930s the Christian Assyrians and Armenians were especially discriminated against: In 1938, Armenian community schools were closed; an ultraconservative paper called Ettela'at (Information)—closely associated with the court—launched a smear campaign against these two ethnic minorities, running a series of articles on "dangerous criminals," all with identifiably Armenian or Assyrian names. 80 It is not surprising that members of these two minority groups were especially receptive to the egalitarian policies of the Democratic Government of Azerbaijan in 1945-1946. Persian governors were assigned to Azerbaijan, and most high administrative jobs were filled by Persian, not Azeri, officials. Azeri students who spoke Turkic in classrooms were humiliated, fined, and physically punished. According to the head of the Department of Education in Azerbaijan,

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"Any student speaking Turkic shall have a nosebag placed on his head." 8 1 Explained Abdullah Mustofi, the governor of Azerbaijan in the late 1930s: I always reminded the Azerbaijanis . . . "You are the true children of Darius and Cambyses [ancient Persian monarchs]; why do you speak the language of . . . Genghis [Khan]?" Of course my only intention was to promote national unity, to prevent the use of the Turkic language, and to eliminate the issue of a Turkish-speaking minority in the eyes of the foreigners. . . . I strongly encouraged the use of Farsi. 8 2

One Azeri who was educated in this period summarizes the situation: Especially toward the end of Reza Shah's reign, we were treated like subIranians; our intellectual faculties were compared to those of animals [donkeys] by Persian officials. After World War II started, this policy seemed to b e c o m e more pronounced. The more the Pahlavi regime denigrated us, the more resentment toward Persian culture was created. 83

As for the Kurds, the Iranian government did its best to pretend that they did not exist. The shah's outlawing of ethnic clothing in 1928 had resulted in a tribal revolt in Kurdistan, which was bloodily suppressed. Later in the shah's reign, his policy of national unification became more strenuous: The name Kurdistan was replaced, at the instigation of the Society for Public Guidance, with the term "West Azerbaijan," and the province was administered as part of the same unit as Azerbaijan. Kurds were referred to, not as Kurds, but as "mountain Iranians." By the beginning of World War II, the entire Mahabad police garrison was Azcri; this policy of suppressing one ethnic minority with its historic enemy was reminiscent of Qajar administration. Persian and Azeri officials received the top administrative jobs in Kurdistan. 8 4 The Kurds were embittered against Persians and Azeris alike. Their hostility toward Azeris already had centuries of tradition, but Reza Shah's policies exacerbated this traditional antipathy. From 1934 to 1941, the centralization of the economy, which had already injured Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, became even more pronounced. Reza Shah's patrimonial tendencies toward state capitalism were reinforced by external models, including Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Kemalist Turkey. With German assistance, the shah continued to industrialize. The budgetary allocations to the Ministry of Industry increased dramatically; the industrial budget in 1941 was fifty times that of 1934. Industrialization increasingly emphasized the production of weapons: A machine-gun factory was established in Tehran; an airplane factory, called Shahbaz—the shah's falcon—was built near Tehran. 8 5 In the late 1930s, when Iran began to import grain, the shah realized that his emphasis on industry to the exclusion of agriculture was harmful. Iran's traditional self-sufficiency in agriculture had fallen victim to its new links to the

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world economy as well as to policies favoring urban at the expense of rural areas. 86 The shah's response to this crisis was inadequate and centered around his own wealth: He vowed energetic government effort to improve agriculture and devoted large subsidies from the Department of Agriculture to encourage cash crops such as tobacco, silk, and tea, which happened to be the principal crops grown on his estates. "Model farms" were established with funds from the Department of Agriculture, with some modern agricultural machinery; these farms were located exclusively on the royal estates. To encourage the development of the silk industry (and limit foreign competition for the shah's textile refineries), protective laws were passed prohibiting the import of silk cloth. 87 Both Kurdistan and Azerbaijan were, of course, neglected by the shah's modernization program. Because Tabriz had previously been Iran's principal commercial center, the Azeri middle class increasingly resented the shah's economic centralism. Bourgeois Azeris were not pleased with their integration into the unified Iranian economy, or with the state's attempt to monopolize the distribution of agricultural goods. Observed the British consul in Tabriz in 1937: The north feels that the south has been carried away by meretricious doctrines, and that it will drag the north with it to disaster. The Shah, of course, is responsible for linking the north to the south and he is hated accordingly; even more, perhaps, . . . because in all the upsets he has created, he has contrived to acquire a very large fortune for himself. 8 8

Azerbaijan received no benefits from economic centralism, despite the province's considerable tax contributions to the Tehran government. Many Azeris felt that this neglect was deliberate; Homayoun Katouzian, an Iranian political economist, writes: [T]he policy deliberately discriminated against . . . the northwestern province of Azerbaijan. Indeed, the Azerbaijanis—who . . . make up some of the most able and productive human resources of the country— were subjected to such a degree of discrimination that they were led to wholesale migration to Tehran itself. 8 9

When floods ravaged Tabriz, no help came from Tehran; the city was charged for the costs of repairing the old dam. At the beginning of World War II, famine ravaged Azerbaijan, once the breadbasket of Iran. Considering the great budgetary allocations given to dams on the royal estates, the Azerbaijanis' resentment is understandable.90 Kurdistan was severely injured by the state monopoly on tobacco and by Reza Shah's subsidies for production on his own estates. 91 Health care in Kurdistan and Baluchistan was the worst in the country; no factories or roads were built in Kurdistan. The Kurdish economy, unlike the Azeri economy, did not even enjoy the dubious benefits of economic centralization; the economic

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system remained provincial, extremely undeveloped, and unintegrated with the national economy. The Kurdish petty bourgeoisie resented state monopolies as well as the government's neglect of the province. 92 As part of an effort to move toward a more integral form of nationalism and further consolidate his personal power, 93 Reza Shah accelerated his secularization of Iranian society. In 1934, he visited Turkey, where Ataturk's successful secular reforms greatly impressed him. On his return, he enacted a series of laws to break down Iran's religious traditions: He allowed women to attend the new University of Tehran; in January 1935 he outlawed the veil; Western clothing was made mandatory for all government employees and all males exccpt registered clergymen were obliged to wear "international" headgear—a felt hat with a brim that interfered with Moslem prayer rituals. To wear their traditional turbans and robes, clergymen had to be certified by the Ministry of Education. 94 These actions, particularly the unveiling of women, were greatly resented by the clergy. In Mashad and Shiraz, uprisings against these new laws were bloodily suppressed, and in the wake of the revolts, the popular guardian of the Shrine of Imam Reza was court-martialed and hanged. The pro-British Prime Minister Furoughi, who had family ties to the guardian, was removed from office and replaced by Mahmood Jams, a more pliable individual. Mudarres, who had been living under house arrest near Mashad, was brutally executed a few years later. 95 In 1939, as part of his accelerated war of attrition against the clergy, the shah ordered the Ministry of Education to assume control of the waqf lands— religious endowments administered by the religious hierarchy—and in 1941, the ministry was advised to sell these lands to obtain money needed for general education. By making the clergy dependent on the state for their livelihood, the shah sought to make them state functionaries; his deposition in September 1941 would halt the implementation of this policy. 96 The shah became increasingly insecure; his personal unease with his own humble background and limited qualifications for rulership found expression in his political administration. By the end of his reign, he had killed not only his former enemies, but the people who had helped him in his rise to power. Teymurtash was murdered in prison, as was Nosorat al-Dowleh Firuz, a Qajar prince who had come to support Reza Shah during his rise. Davar committed suicide to avoid imminent execution or disgrace. The shah, bereft of his trusted advisors, was increasingly isolated and more and more often resorted to force to attain his goals. Movement was restricted by internal passports and military checkpoints; administrative and military officers were played off against one another, as in Qajar times. 97 Insecurity and corruption radiated from the shah downwards, throughout the entire society, and became institutionalized. Reza Shah definitely altered the class structure of Iran. However, in the atmosphere of insecurity he helped to create, he failed to win allies, even among those who had, from a material point of view, prospered the most from his rule. As has been noted, many tribal khans were dispossessed, and their lands reverted

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to the shah or royal favorites. Many tribal leaders or members of the old nobility, and many of the shah's adherents who had fallen out of favor, were imprisoned or executed. Writes Abrahamian, "For members of the old upper class, life was certainly not poor, but it could easily turn nasty, brutish, and short." 98 A new landed oligarchy arose, an amalgamation of those old landlords who had avoided having their lands taken away, court favorites, army officers, and high bureaucrats who had acquired land through their connections with Reza Shah and his court. The new landed upper class did benefit from Reza Shah's rule. The shah had a vested interest in preserving the feudal structure (though not the feudal landlords themselves). Internal security in the countryside was provided by (usually corrupt) gendarmes and army personnel." Because the shah was the largest landlord, he passed legislation to benefit that class at the expense of peasants, shifting the responsibility for agricultural taxes to them. Land taxes were reduced to a minuscule sum; in 1939, they accounted for only a quarter of 1 percent of the total tax revenue. The shah encouraged regional magnates to claim communal property as their own. 100 He also decreed that, in future, kadkhodas were to be appointed by the landlord, instead of being selected by the villagers. While the landed upper class was not very active in support of Reza Shah, it certainly did not oppose him; after World War II, it became the main pillar of Mohammad Reza Shah's regime. 101 The military draft and taxes on sugar and tea added to the peasants' misery. The shah's encouragement of industry at the expense of agriculture and concentration of wealth in Tehran further worsened the plight of the rural poor. "There is great distress among millions of peasants," Violet Conolly reported in 1935. 102 Social relationships in rural areas, then, remained much as they were before Reza Shah, despite changes in the composition of the landed upper class. If anything, the shah's legislation and military presence reinforced the patrimonial nature of these relationships. In general, the gap between rich and poor widened. Although the clergy's position was certainly injured by Reza Shah's secularizing policies, clerical opposition to Reza Shah manifested itself only in major cities such as Qum, Mashad, and Shiraz. Even after the confiscation of waqf land, the clergy did not attempt to arouse the rural population against the shah, a toleration of the shah's dictatorship that reinforced the patrimonialism of the social structure in the countryside. 103 A relatively small number of peasants were absorbed into the growing urban proletariat by the oilfields and by the construction projects and factories established in the shah's "state capitalism." Iran's industrial work force (excluding the oil sector) tripled between 1931 and 1941. By the end of Reza Shah's reign, there were between 500,000 and 700,000 workers in the country, including those in older industries such as carpet weaving and fisheries as well as the recently created factories and construction projects. 1 0 4 The racial segmentation in this proletariat was great. Many of the oilfield workers were

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ethnic Arabs, Indians, Baluchis, Bakhtiaris, Qashqais, and Lurs. 1 0 5 The shah's factories (paradoxically, in light of the monarch's constant assertions of Persian superiority) employed many mohajers from the Caucasus because of their reputation for technical expertise. This ethnically diverse proletariat remained small and was prohibited from striking or organizing trade unions. The factory centers, however, experienced substantial labor unrest after the shah's abdication; factories on the shah's estates were especially receptive to Tudeh activities in the 1940s. 106 While the security of Reza's reign permitted the old bazaari middle class to expand somewhat, his centralized state capitalism hindered their prosperity and independence, especially in such provincial cities as Tabriz and Mahabad. Also, this social class had close links to the ulama, who had lost income and prestige because of the shah's secularization policies. Conolly described the situation: "Partly as a result of world trade conditions, partly of government policy, the merchant class in Persia is practically ruined, and the activity of former great trading centers like Tabriz, Isfahan, and Sultanabad paralyzed." 107 A new middle class rose in Reza Shah's state capitalism and social development programs: Obtaining or administering government monopolies or large contracts became a means of economic and social advancement. The junior officer ranks of the army, the university and colleges, and the various branches of the government bureaucracy were also channels for upward social and economic mobility. Whereas Hitler and Mussolini channeled political participation into their respective monolithic parties, however, the shah was too insecure to permit even this symbolic level of political participation, and the integral nationalism he sought to achieve in this period never grew deep roots in the minds of Iranians. Because the elite that controlled Iran's political system was restricted to the royal favorites, there was no "circulation of elites," and the government was inherently unstable. This instability erupted after Reza Shah's abdication in 1941. Ann Lambton observed: Reza Shah had failed to create a situation in which the people could find scope in effective and creative social action. . . . No outlet had been left for the ambitions and capacities of the individual citizens. As a result . . . when Reza Shah went, and with him the hollow regime which he had built up, there remained a spiritual vacuum. 108 After the Azerbaijan crisis, this new middle class, in an effort to attain political power that would not be dominated by any foreign country, became the main social base for Mossadegh's National Front. 1 0 9 In the meantime, their frustrated ambitions could only be expressed in clandestine political activities, including participation in both Nazi and Communist movements. T h e influence of Nazi ideology in Iran was not confined to the shah; the notion of an alliance with Germany was very popular with many politicians and high-ranking clergymen. H o w e v e r , to a large extent, this was m e r e l y a

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resurgence of the traditional third-power policy and not a reflection of ideological attraction. By allying themselves with a foreign power, these elements simply sought to enhance their position in Iran's internal politics, a position that was at best insecure. Some Iranians, however, were impressed by Nazism as an ideology, and many junior army officers and college students saw it as a possible substitute for Reza Shah's dictatorship. Although the shah was favorably disposed toward Nazi Germany, the Iranian Fascist movement obviously threatened his monopoly of power. In 1937, a group of twenty college graduates headed by Mohsen Jahansouz, a young second lieutenant, was arrested for advocating a Fascist coup against the shah; Jahansouz was executed. 110 After World War II began, a group called the Secret Committee was established. While this committee undoubtedly included Nazi ideologues, most members simply pursued a pro-German third-power policy. The committee sent a representative to Berlin to suggest German assistance in overthrowing Reza Shah. After the Allied invasion, Franz Mayr headed a ring of saboteurs with the aid of at least 170 Iranian members of the German-sponsored Hezbe Melli-i Iran, or the National Party of Iran. General Fazlollah Zahedi and Ayatollah Kashani were leading participants in these pro-German activities. 111 Communism also attracted many young members of the new middle class; ideology was clearly the main cause of this attraction. Since the long-term repercussions of the Communist movement under Reza Shah are much greater than the long-term ramifications of the pro-Nazi movement, it is worthwhile to discuss this movement in some detail. Shortly before the fall of the Gilan Soviet, and in an attempt to form a nationwide, rather than provincial, party network, the PCP extended its activities and organization throughout Iran. 112 During Reza Shah's rule, the Communist Party continued to function, albeit underground. It was officially crushed in 1926-1927. PCP activists resurfaced briefly in 1929, when oil industry workers in the AIOC waged a strike that cut across the traditional ethnic boundaries of workers on the oilfields. The strike was led by Yousef Eftekhari, a PCP member with a long record of union activities. The Gilan revolution veterans Pishevari and Ardeshir Ovanessian also participated in the organization of this strike and were arrested. 113 In response to a partially successful Communist-led textile strike in Isfahan in May 1931, Reza Shah again crushed the Communist nuclei. A June 1931 law forbad participation in any group or association "whose aim and conduct is opposition to the Iranian constitutional monarchy, or contains communistic ideology." 114 Soon after, Stalin conducted purges in the Soviet Union in which many Iranian Communist leaders, including Sultanzadeh, were killed. The remnants of the PCP survived in Tehran's Qasr prison. 115 The PCP, however, still had a branch in Europe organized by Sultanzadeh, which provided an outlet for political activities, suppressed in Iran, among Iranian students in Germany in the late 1920s. 116 Morteza Alavi, a descendant of a famous constitutionalist

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family, directed the entire European branch of the Communist Party. Ostensibly, the purpose of their organization was to defend the students' rights and help them get along in the West; in practice, however, it conducted Marxist ideological education and vehement antishah propaganda. 117 Tagi Arani, an Azeri member of this organization who came to know Alavi personally, impressed Alavi with his intellectual and personal quality. In 1930, Arani returned to Iran but retained his contact with Alavi, who naturally fled Germany after Hitler came to power in 1933. At Alavi's urging, Arani continued his political activities as a physics professor in Iran. By 1933, with two other Iranians he had met in Europe, he had created the first cell of the new Iranian Communist Party. One of these two allies was Iraj Iskandari (a nephew of Suleiman Mirza Iskandari) who had been exposed to Marxism while a student in France—which exposure cost him his state scholarship—and who had become a bureaucrat in the justice ministry. The other was Morteza's brother Bozorg Alavi, who had bccome politically active when he had returned to Iran and experienced the cultural shock of Reza Shah's dictatorship. In 1933, these three men began issuing the magazine Donya (The World), of which Arani was the chief editor. 118 In 1935, Arani made a trip to Moscow, during which he convinced the Comintern officials to assist in building a new Communist Party in Iran. Following his visit, a Provisional Central Committee was chosen from among the Donya group, with Arani as secretary-general; this central committee was provisional because it was intended to function until a Third Congress of the PCP could be held. 119 The Provisional Central Committee established a student organization with cells on college campuses for the discussion of Marxism and current affairs. The object of this organization, according to Bozorg Alavi, was to create an intellectual atmosphere in which political, social, economic, and international issues could be discussed freely. Arani's exceptional humanity and abilities as a teacher attracted many young people to his movement, and the cells conducted discussions of his writings. But, the student organization also organized a 1936 strike at the Technical College, which succeeded in forcing the replacement of the head of the college; the same year, a strike led by Arani's student organization prevented the minister of education from expelling two medical students. 120 An attempt to organize party activities in Khuzistan aroused the authorities to act against Arani's entire organization. 121 In April 1937, Arani and fifty-two followers were arrested. The trial of forty-eight of them in November 1938 was a major event, and the subsequent imprisonment of forty-five had long-lasting repercussions on the Communist movement in Iran. The composition of the Fifty-Three, as they have come to be known, is revealing: Two, Reza Radmanesh and Morteza Yazdi, were veterans of the Gilan revolution. Almost all were members of the new Iranian middle class; and, in striking contrast to the earlier, Azeri-dominated PCP, most of the Fifty-Three were Persian

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Tehranis. These shifts reflect the changes in Iran's society and economy under Reza Shah. The Persian origins and ideological concerns of this new middleclass intelligentsia led them to value national unity and a strong central government. Unlike the older PCP members, the Fifty-Three "tended to underestimate the regional conflicts between the capital and the provinces." 122 Only five of the Fifty-Three were Azeris, including Arani; these Azeris were all quite Persianized and committed to a strong central government. As a student in Germany, Arani had written an article calling for the eradication of the Turkish language from Azerbaijan as a means of national unification. 123 Arani's spirited, dignified defense was an impressive demonstration of his convictions. He attacked the 1931 act under which he and the others were tried, asserting that prohibiting freedom of expression and association was a barrier to progress in Iran. "We fifty-three people," he asserted, "are the representatives of the progressive, intellectual, oppressed class of Iran. You judges are representatives of the ruling class." 124 With these words, Arani expressed a belief that the intelligentsia, especially victimized by the prevailing system in Iran, had a duty to lead the oppressed uneducated masses. This theme would recur in the Tudeh after World War II. The court sentenced forty-five of the defendants to varying terms of imprisonment. In the Qasr prison, where veterans of the Gilan revolution and later PCP activities—including Pishevari, Ovanessian, and the Azeri labor activist Eftekhari—were also imprisoned, Arani and his followers turned their jail cells into centers of political education. 125 Arani died as a result of maltreatment, becoming a martyr of the Iranian Communist movement. Political friction had already developed in the Qasr prison before the incarceration of the Fifty-Three, revolving around personal conflicts as well as ideological disagreements. Eftekhari and Ovanessian accused one another of being a Trotskyite and a Stalinist, respectively. Both men developed a strong antipathy for Pishevari. 126 Ovanessian, who prided himself on his understanding of and adherence to Marxist ideology, generally sided with the Fifty-Three against Pishevari; Ovanessian's centralism was one ideological factor that united him with Arani's followers. Ovanessian, who became an important figure in the Tudeh in subsequent years and played an interesting role in the events in Azerbaijan, had been raised in Gilan; by ancestry an Armenian Azerbaijani, he was an extreme centralist who thought of himself as an Iranian, not an Armenian. 1 2 7 In the years after World War II, these rivalries played a role in Azerbaijan's internal difficulties. The conflict between Pishevari and many of Arani's followers reflected differences in political socialization among them, as well as personal rivalries. Many of the political prisoners, including the Fifty-Three, boycotted Pishevari; Pishevari, for his part, referred to them with contempt and a measure of jealousy for their sudden prominence in radical politics: "They brought these Fifty-Three to us in jail. Of course they were all educated and well-versed, but they lacked our experiences. They were not well-experienced in political struggle." Pishevari

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consoled himself with the thought that "these youths, after seeing us, who had been in jail for eight, nine, or ten years without losing our hope, were encouraged to use us as models." 128 However, friction between Pishevari and the Fifty-Three remained. Pishevari's journal Azhir (Alarm) directed personal diatribes against the Fifty-Three in October 1944, illustrating the formative effects of prison rivalries on future politics: T h e s e men, having read s o m e books, p u b l i s h e d a journal, and accidentally participated in a strike, had no real political experience. . . . Although there were some among us old prisoners who showed signs of weakness, w e were, on the whole, far superior to these fiftythree. 1 2 9

In the post-World War II era, this friction was reflected in the rift between Pishevari's Democratic Party of Azerbaijan and the Fifty-Three-led Tudeh Party. Pishevari's experience in Gilan had led him to favor a less dogmatic approach to revolution than that of Ovanessian and the Fifty-Three; in the Azerbaijani revolution, this less dogmatic approach involved subordinating class revolution to national revolution. The national unity advocated by the Fifty-Three contrasted strongly; the lack of cooperation between these two groups would be a major cause of the collapse of the Azerbaijani revolution. 130 Foreign Policy: Prescription for Invasion In the early years of Reza Shah's reign, relations with the Soviet Union were fairly cold; the Soviets viewed the north-south railroad and the Pahlavi monarch's suppression of the PCP as hostile gestures.131 But while the Shah did little to dispel the Soviets' fears, trade between Iran and the Soviet Union continued to be extremely important for both partners; in 1925, more than 63 percent of the Soviet Union's imports from Asia came from Iran, and, through this period, the Soviet Union had about a third of Iran's foreign trade. Until 1939, when it was superseded by Germany, the Soviet Union was Iran's largest trading partner.132 While Reza Shah did attempt to limit Britain's involvement in Iranian affairs, the British retained their dominant position. Pro-British ministers, including Vossugh and Firuz, were retained in the early cabinets. In foreign trade as well as other aspects of foreign relations, British influence was great. The Imperial Bank continued to function in Iran, albeit with reduced powers, and controlled the funds allocated for the railroad. 133 The internal security of Reza's reign permitted the AIOC to function comfortably in Iran; by acquiring the Bakhtiari khans' shares in the company, the shah identified his own interests with Britain's in this matter. The royalties the Iranian treasury was supposed to obtain from the company were converted by a bank in Britain into

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(predominantly) British-made weapons for the use of the Iranian army; the cash never entered Iran during Reza Shah's rule. It should, however, be noted that the foreign advisors who came to Iran in this period were mostly Scandinavians, Germans, and others whose nations lacked traditional "interests" in Iran. 134 Even in these early years, disagreements emerged in Irano-British relations. The shah lodged a foimal protest over the British control of the Bahrein islands, but nothing came of it. The shah's relations with the British protectorate of Iraq were unfriendly at best; however, here, too, he was unable to obtain any tangible concessions (either in regard to the rights of Iranians living in Iraq, or in regard to the dispute over the Shatt-al-Arab waterway). In 1933, the shah, apparently without understanding the economic and political implications of his action, rescinded the D'Arcy oil concession. The British reaction was swift; gunboats in the Persian Gulf made it clear to the shah that his reign depended on Britain's goodwill. A new concession was quickly signed that, on paper, gave Iran a greater percentage of the oil revenues; but Iran was still not permitted to share in the company's management or to investigate its accounts. Furthermore, the term of the D'Arcy concession, which was due to expire in 1961, was extended to 1993. The British were given the right unilaterally to annul the treaty at any time, but Iran received no corresponding concession. 135 After this episode, the view that Reza Shah was a British agent—which had been dormant amidst the nationalistic fervor that surrounded the early part of his reign 136 —attained new force. Instead of being perceived as a strong, nationalist leader, as he had once been, he was now perceived as, at best, an impulsive diplomat; at worst, and more commonly, he was viewed as a British puppet who had deliberately strengthened Britain's position in Iran and the stranglehold of the AIOC. The company remained a tangible symbol of imperialism and foreign domination in Iran. As we shall see, the effects of its existence on Iranian politics, including the Azerbaijan crisis and the formation of the National Front, were considerable. In the last years of his reign, Reza Shah increasingly sought to strengthen his position in world affairs by using the third-power policy. He hoped to employ Germany as a lever to remove British political predominance over Iran and to reduce Iran's economic interactions with the Soviet Union. This policy was designed to strengthen Iran as a regional power, which, in Reza Shah's view, was equivalent to strengthening his own power. His ambition to play a role in world affairs as a regional leader was reflected in Iran's relationship with Iraq, Turkey, and Afghanistan. He put aside the territorial disputes with these three countries, which had simmered in the early part of his reign, and labored toward a cordial relationship. On July 4, 1937, he finally negotiated a treaty with Iraq that, in essence, ceded control of most of the Shatt-al-Arab (Ervand Roud) to Iraq. On July 8 of that year, years of preliminary negotiations, urged on by the shah's intense efforts, culminated in the conclusion of the Sa'ad Abad Pact among Iran, Turkey, Iraq, and Afghanistan in the Sa'ad Abad Palace in Tehran. This pact provided for the inviolability of the borders of all countries

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involved and called for "mutual consultation" in the event of an attack by an outside power. In the period when Britain was reaching rapprochement with Germany, and the Axis powers concluded the "Pact of Steel" against the Soviet Union, the Soviets viewed the Sa'ad Abad Pact as part of a worldwide policy designed to encircle the USSR. 1 3 7 However, the military provisions actually specified by the treaty were minimal and, as events proved, ineffective. Regional security provisions, directed against a possible Kurdish revolt (which would have involved Iraq, Iran, and Turkey) were stronger. "The internal and regional security provided for by the pact," Amini noted, "complemented the military style of the shah's rule." 138 A major component of the shah's endeavor to make Iran a regional power was, of course, his relationship with Germany. As has been noted, trade with Germany increased dramatically in this period. Hjalmar Schacht's 1936 visit to Iran resulted in an Irano-German trade agreement; the increase of trade brought an increase of cultural and political ties as well. In 1937, Baldur von Schirach, chief of the Hitler Youth organizations, reviewed a parade of Iranian boy scouts and spoke sympathetically of Iran's national emancipation. The number of German employees in Iranian transportation facilities grew; many engaged in propaganda, espionage, and sabotage on behalf of the German government. 1 3 9 While Britain acquiesced in German economic and political gains in Iran during the appeasement period, the Soviet Union was increasingly alarmed. The Soviets officially protested the presence of German equipment and technical advisors in the Caspian region. Reza Shah ignored this protest, as well as subsequent protests over proposed hirings of Italian and Japanese consultants. The shah's 1938 refusal to renew Iran's trade agreement with the Soviet Union added to the political tension between the two nations. 1 4 0 When war broke out between Germany and the Allied powers, Britain, too, grew alarmed at the level of German political and economic influence, as well as fifth column infiltration, in Iran. The shah proclaimed Iran's neutrality, but Britain had cause to question its sincerity. The German legation in Baghdad, headed by Grobba, had been the main center of Nazi political activity in the Middle East before the outbreak of the war; when the war broke out, he moved his personnel to Tehran and continued his efforts there. On October 18, 1939, a secret protocol between Iran and Germany made Iran a main supplier of raw materials for the German war effort. 1 4 1 The shah's increasing efforts to exercise his independence of action also surfaced in oil issues in the years preceding and during the war. In 1936, the shah attempted to cede control over the northern oil to a U.S. firm. This attempt failed as a result of British and Soviet protests; the Soviets reminded Iran that this concession violated Article 13 of the 1921 Irano-Soviet treaty. In 1938, the shah tried to cede the northern oil to a subsidiary of the Royal Dutch Petroleum Company. The outbreak of World War II halted this proposed oil agreement. 1 4 2 During the early years of the war, the shah tried to exploit the international

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situation to bargain for a higher price on Iranian oil. The British, exasperated, closed down the oil wells in Khuzistan. It was obvious that Iran's reliability as a source of raw materials was increasingly questionable. 143 After Germany invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, Iran's geographical importance to the Allied war effort grew considerably. Since Russia's northern ports were hemmed in by Axis forces, Iran was an important route for British war materiel (and U.S. lend-lease). The shah refused to heed Allied requests to permit the transport of weapons or to secure the route (the Trans-Iranian Railroad) by expelling Axis—especially German—personnel. The British were initially reluctant to launch an invasion, as this would involve introducing Soviet influence into Iran. Winston Churchill wrote years later, "I was not without some anxiety about embarking on a Persian war, but the arguments for it were compulsive." 144 Britain and the USSR issued Iran a joint ultimatum in August 1941; it was answered with yet another protestation of neutrality. Hitler sent a message to the shah expressing gratitude for Iran's neutrality and stressing the likelihood that, if Iran "held out" long enough against Allied pressure, Germany would be able to destroy Soviet Russia and any British attempt to create a line of defense in the Caucasus. 145 Not realizing the gravity of Iran's situation, the shah gave a provocative speech at the Military Academy, where cadets graduated a month earlier than expected: When you understand the reason . . . your sense of pride and sacrifice will be aroused. It is not necessary for me to bring to your attention the special situation of the day. . . . I say only that it is important for the officers, and the army, to be on alert, and not to hesitate to sacrifice even your lives should that prove necessary. 1 4 6

Not surprisingly, the Allies interpreted this speech as a call for mobilization. Allied propaganda, especially from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), began singling the shah out as an avaricious dictator. Forces opposed to the shah could also prove dangerous to the Allies: While disillusion with the shah was great, it was by no means connected to pro-Allied sentiments, and any antishah coup would undoubtedly have been pro-German. A pro-German military coup was a major concern of the Allies, who were very much aware of the shah's unpopularity. The shah was so isolated, thanks to his policy of liquidating friends and enemies alike, that he had no such awareness. He thought his army would fight to protect him, as it had in earlier years; he actually thought his army could resist both Britain and the USSR. Many of the shah's advisors, of course, knew better. However, they were understandably cautious in explaining matters to the shah, who was apt to view anything short of complete subservience as open treason. 147 On August 25, 1941, after repeated ultimatums that the shah continued to disregard, British and Soviet forces invaded Iran. The army, into which the shah had invested much of the country's resources in the course of his reign, melted

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away in an instant. Most officers fled to the capital, and their soldiers returned to their provincial villages. The High Council of National Defense issued a decree two days after the Allied invasion dissolving the army and recommending that the shah ask for a "cease-fire." 148 Amazingly, even when the invading forces were marching on Tehran, the shah still failed to appreciate the gravity of the situation. He reluctantly offered to expel the Axis legations and appoint the proBritish Furoughi as prime minister; but he told the British ambassador that he expected some form of reimbursement for these gestures. He continued to dicker over the price of oil. An article in the monarchist paper Ettela'at reassured the public that Iranian embassies would remain in Axis capitals to assure continued political relations. 149 After this article was published, Soviet troops moved into Tehran. The shah abdicated in favor of his son and fled southwards to the British lines.

The Shah's Legacy By the end of Reza Shah's reign in 1941, great changes had taken place in Iran. But, as A.rthur Millspaugh astutely observed, if the first Pahlavi monarch had played a more limited role, the government and the people would have done during this time most of the good things that are attributed to the Shah and fewer of the bad things. . . . During these years much of the essential economic change that occurred in Persia occurred also in Iraq, Syria, and Palestine. In these countries, too, factories were founded, cities grew. . . . Moreover, in Iraq, Syria, and Palestine, the people themselves seem to have grown in energy, initiative and purpose. 1 5 0

No corresponding growth in personal initiative was possible in Iran under Reza's autocratic rule. The constant interference of the shah and his army in the various branches of government prevented the rationalization, professionalization, and often even the functioning of the bureaucracy. The shah's "system" lacked the capacity to sustain or absorb change. His enduring legacy was composed of deep and lasting scars on Iran's society and polity, scars that dominated his country's postwar history. The shah's foreign policy was, at first, one-sided, favoring Great Britain over Soviet Russia. This fact had a negative effect on Iran's relations with the Soviet Union after World War II, as the Soviets wished to ensure that Iran would, in future, pursue a more balanced foreign policy. Similarly, the shah's attempt to employ the third-power policy in the second half of his reign, by introducing Gentian influence in the region, led Britain, in the postwar years, to see any Iranian employment of this policy (for example, by introducing U.S. influence) as a threat to British interests.

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The shah's internal reforms and modernization programs were superficial at best. The economic, educational, and judicial reforms, as we have seen, were intended to gain national prestige more than to create national prosperity, knowledge, or justice. They emphasized industry at the expense of agriculture, rote memorization at the expense of practical applications, and political expedience over individual liberties. The most crucial shortcoming of the shah's internal modernization lay in his failure to create political institutions through which the new middle class that he had helped create could channel its views into the political process, and into which new elites could circulate peacefully. T h e first Pahlavi ruler wanted to modernize Iran without altering the patrimonial structure of society, which was his main source of power. The shah's plans for development, which were clearly in the direction of autocratic centralism, would have required symbolic mass participation to succeed. However, the first Pahlavi monarch viewed mass participation as a threat to his rule, not as a potential support. His attempt to create a national consciousness was, therefore, doomed to failure. This failure resulted in a legitimacy crisis so acute that even the shah's hand-picked parliament turned against him after the Allied invasion. Firuz Kazemzadeh noted that upon his abdication, "the imposing facade of Reza Shah's regime collapsed . . . revealing the jerry-built structure behind." 151 Ethnic minorities, particularly Kurds and Azeris, were alienated by the Tehran-centric urban orientation of the shah's government as well as by the Persian chauvinism of his national unification program. It should also be remembered that the Azeris and Kurds were assimilated into the political system to an even lesser extent than were the new Tehrani middle class. The shah's internal policies widened the existing cleavages in society, destabilizing the nation and paving the way for revolution among the ethnic minorities of the agricultural north.

7

The Northern Revolutions and Great Power Policy Q^c)

The Kurds have no grievances, for they are members of the Iranian race. . . . The people of Azerbaijan have never regarded Turkic, which has been imposed upon them by barbarian Mongols, as their true language. —Premier Hakimi, Fourteenth Majlis (1945)

This chapter will describe political developments in Iran during and immediately after World War II, including the embryonic revolutionary movements in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan as well as the fomiation of political parties, most notably the Tudeh, in Tehran. The interactions of the Soviet Union, Britain, and the United States with the Iranian political tableau will also be examined. As the Allied armies invaded and the Iranian army disintegrated, a power vacuum resulted in many provinces: In Tehran, Reza Shah's removal resulted in an overflow of political expression, but the diverse political parties rarely exercised political control over the provinces. State power diminished drastically outside Tehran, sometimes ceasing altogether. In Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, the local grievances that had been suppressed under Reza Shah's political system came out into the open. For months after the invasion, the central government had no control over Azerbaijan. Soviet troops administered the province loosely and eventually helped the central government establish a measure of control. 1 The Soviets' correct behavior impressed the Azerbaijanis; Samuel G. Ebling, the U.S. consul in Tabriz, observed, "The self-restraint of Soviet officers and enlisted personnel, lack of drunkenness and disorderly conduct, and a minimum of interference with civilian authorities have deeply impressed the Iranian population." 2 The political and cultural freedom Azerbaijanis enjoyed under the Soviets was considerable, especially compared with Reza Shah's recent oppression. Armenians and Assyrians especially welcomed the Russian troops as liberators; Armenians put flowers on Soviet tanks when they arrived in Tabriz in August 1941. 3 Considering the anti-Christian bias of the shah's administration in the last part of his reign, this attitude was understandable. 122

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Azeris were able to speak and publish newspapers in their native tongue without fearing retribution; cultural and theatrical organizations appeared in Tabriz. A council of notables was formed from the local population, which refused to recognize the central government, demanded the use of Azeri in state schools, and raised a volunteer militia from among the mohajers.4 In this liberated atmosphere, the Azerbaijanis were able, at long last, to air their grievances, foremost among them the linguistic issue. In February 1942 the newspaper Azerbaijan—one of the first to appear in the province after the Allied invasion—proclaimed the goals of Azerbaijanis in general: Our main aim . . . is 10 protect the democratic right of the people to use their mother tongue. It is high time the government admitted that Azerbaijanis are not and have never been Persian speakers. Our official and mother language is Azerbaijani. We will do all we can to nurture our mother language in our schools and government offices. Those who have tried to destroy our language must change their attitudes. 5

In Kurdistan, too, an exhilarated atmosphere of cultural and political freedom prevailed. Northern Kurdistan was occupied by the Soviets, and southern Kurdistan by the British, but there was a considerable area, centered on Mahabad, between the armies of the two powers. There no government had any control. According to a Soviet vice-consul who visited the region, "[I]n actuality there are tens of small Kurdish republics in the area; and the Persians have to arrive at their destinations by a circuitous detour of 50 kilometres." 6 Kurdish chieftains interned by Reza Shah returned to their tribes; arms long hidden were unburied. Kurds once again spoke and published in their native tongue without constraint and wore their native costumes. 7 In this period of cultural freedom, the Kurds began voicing their national aspirations. They discussed the failure of international law (exemplified in the defunct Sèvres Treaty of 1920) to bring about an independent, unified state composed of Kurdish territories in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Soviet Union, as a great historical tragedy. 8 Meetings between Kurds from all these countries—except the Soviet Union—laid the groundwork for creating a Kurdish state. In September 1942, the clandestine Komoleh-i Zhian-i Kurdistan, or Committee for the Resurrection of Kurdistan, was established in Mahabad with assistance from Mir Haj, a Kurdish captain in the Iraqi army. Haj was associated with the Iraqi Hewa (Hope) Party, composed largely of Marxist members of the Kurdish urban intelligentsia in Iraq. The Kurdish nationalism the Komoleh sponsored sought to transcend tribal and religious, though not racial, barriers. Membership was open to any Kurd, including Shi'ite Kurds, as well as to Christian Assyrians, who were considered to be Kurds by race. 9 Although this nationalist committee was clandestine, its recruiting efforts were extremely successful. The initial membership was largely bourgeois and petty bourgeois; however, it rapidly expanded among tribal chiefs, religious figures, and their

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followers. T h e Komoleh's goal of Kurdish independence was widely discussed. After a journey through Kurdistan in 1944, Ann Lambton wrote: "From Tabriz to Mahabad, the towns and villages were full of heavily armed Kurds. 1 saw no Persian police or gendarmerie. The few Kurds 1 spoke to all talked of Kurdish independence with enthusiasm." 1 0 The central government appointed Amir As'ad, an old, half-blind Dehbokri tribal chieftain, governor of the Mahabad region, but As'ad lacked the strength and the support from rival tribes necessary to control the area. Power gradually shifted to a g r o u p of Kurdish Mahabadis, foremost a m o n g them Qazi Mohammad, the respected Sunni religious judge. 1 1 While Azeris and Kurds were administering themselves in this ad hoc fashion, Tehran, too, was experiencing an explosion of political participation. Young M o h a m m a d Reza Shah, the nominal head of state after his father's abdication, was not able to exercise autocratic power in the same manner. The Thirteenth Majlis, hand-picked by Reza Shah, seemed lacking in initiative and ability as well as in experience. Prime ministers were the centers of government power, but prime ministers and their cabinets succeeded one another fairly rapidly. Their hold on the government and the army was loose at best and extended only sporadically to the provinces. Qavam's attempt to wrest control of the army and the government from the young shah probably cost him his premiership after his brief tenure in 1942. 1 2 Outside the framework of the Thirteenth Majlis, a great number of political parties appeared. Mirza Hassan Mustawfi described the resultant period of jubilant party formation sarcastically: Whereas under Reza Shah anyone who uttered the word "party" risked imprisonment, now every politician with grandiose ambitions gathers together his personal clique and announces to the world the formation of a new political party. We should name these few years the "age of partyplaying."13

Although the political parties that appeared in Tehran argued over most points, one thing most agreed on was that local grievances, such as those of the Kurds and Azeris, had to give precedence to national unity. Persian nationalism prevailed among the intelligentsia, which held leadership positions in all parties. Although he belonged to no party, the distinguished historian Ahmad Kasravi exemplified such nationalism. Kasravi called for the eradication of Arabic from school curricula (and the eventual elimination of all Arabic words from Farsi) in order to divorce the Iranian state from Islam and foreign cultural influence and thereby strengthen Iranian nationalism. Concerning the grievances of minorities, particularly Kurds and Azeris, he insisted that national solidarity was of paramount importance, and that respecting all claims made by Iran's minorities would lead to the country's dismemberment. 1 4 Kasravi's views on religion were iconoclastic. Shi'ism, according to him, was the primary cause of Iran's social backwardness, including the low status of women and the lack of attention to

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the physical sciences. He blamed the mullahs for the failure of the Constitutional Revolution. 15 While Kasravi's antireligious attitude was atypical of Iranian nationalists of the day, his desire for a strong central government that would prevent resurgent tribalism or feudalism was not. After Reza Shah's departure, Iranian nationalism was intolerant both of foreign influence and of ethnic barriers that might facilitate it. This attitide eventually culminated in Mossadegh's liberal nationalism. One of the most influential World War II-era parties was the Iran Party, which later became the cornerstone of Mossadegh's National Front. The Iran Party was led by young, Western-educated Tehrani intellectuals. The early leaders included Karim Sanjabi, later a cabinet figure under both Mossadegh and Khomeini; the engineer Mehdi Bazargan, the first prime minister of the Islamic Republic; and Ali Shayegan, later a leading National Front figure. Almost all had become fascinated with European socialism and state capitalism during their education in Paris or Berlin. "Our party," Sanjabi admitted years later, "was composed of elitist urban middle class intellectuals who were influenced by socialism and nationalism." 1 6 This political socialization was reflected throughout the Iran Party's platform, summarized by Sanjabi as emphasizing democracy, socialism, and a strong centralized government. 17 The Iran Party advocated antifcudal reforms and propagandized against both old and new wealthy classes; it proposed state-sponsored industrialization to prevent capitalists from further entrenching their oligarchy. With Iran Party support, Mossadegh was elected to the Fourteenth Majlis in 1944. 18 Another influential party that employed nationalist rhetoric was Seyyed Zia's Hizbe Eradeye-i Melli, or National Will Party. Seyycd Zia returned to Iran and founded this party, with British assistance, in autumn 1943. The National Will program tried to link patriotism with religious devotion, calling for a ban on antireligious publications, the return of the chador and other traditional forms of dress, the encouragement of internal commerce, and the destruction of "the vestiges of personal autocracy and the foundations of class oligarchy." 19 The program was decentralist in the extreme, advocating the formation of a confederated United Nations of Iran, the disbandment of the conscripted amiy in favor of a volunteer army, the rearming of the tribes, and the relocation of the capital to Isfahan. Seyyed Zia attacked Reza Shah's "bloodthirsty" antireligious policy and advocated a constitutional monarchy. 20 Muzaffar Firuz, son of the Firuz who had fallen victim to Reza Shah, shared Seyyed Zia's anticourt and antiCommunist biases. He aided Seyyed Zia's return from Palestine and published Ra'adeh Emruz (Today's Thunder), which reflected the National Will Party's programs and anticourt policy. Like many alliances in Iranian politics, this one reflected personal interest, not shared ideology, and was destined to be shortlived. 21

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The Tudeh Party The best-organized party in the World War II era was the Tudeh (Masses) Party. On September 29, 1941, the Tudeh was founded by twenty-seven young members of Arani's Fifty-Three group, recently released from prison in the wake of the Allied invasion. The distinguished Socialist leader Suleiman Mirza Iskandari was chosen as the party's first leader. 22 Considering that Tudeh's founding members had been imprisoned as Marxists, it might have been expected that the party would be Marxist in orientation. However, especially in the early years, the leadership avoided explicit Communist content. There were a number of reasons for this policy: The 1931 anti-Communist act was still on the books, and the Tudeh sought to avoid alarming the ulama\ avoiding such commitment would attract reformers and nationalists, facilitating the antiFascist struggle that the Tudeh regarded as a primary responsibility during the war years; and, finally, the Fifty-Three had an aversion to proclaiming themselves Communists because this would have created the risk of domination by the old Azeri-led PCP leadership. The Tehran-centric Fifty-Three, as noted, were in constant friction with some of the more experienced Communists, notably Pishevari. 21 In October 1942, the First Provisional Conference of the Tudeh was held in Tehran. A Provisional Central Committee was elected, including Iraj Iskandari and Suleiman Iskandari, and the Gilan revolution veterans Ovanessian, Rusta, and Radmanesh. 24 The platform that emerged from this conference proposed sweeping social reforms that would benefit workers and peasants as well as the middle class. However, the Tudeh clearly intended to achieve these reforms through parliamentary, not revolutionary, means. To attract the workers, extensive labor legislation and social welfare programs, including governmentsubsidized housing and pensions, were proposed; to appeal to the peasants, irrigation projects and rural schools and clinics were advocated, as was a law mandating the election of kadkhodas by villagers; to attract the urban middle class, the platform proposed government projects to employ university and high school graduates, a higher and more secure income, and a lower consumer tax. 25 The appeal of this program, which promised much to practically everyone but the ruling oligarchy, is obvious. Ahmad Ghassemi, a leading Tudeh intellectual who had been a party representative among the Turkmans of the Caspian region, explained party policies in his 1944 book, Hezbeh Tudeh Che Miguyad va Che Mikahad?, or What Does the Tudeh Party Say, and What Does it Want? Ghassemi stressed the need for unity and party organization, but unity and centralism often resulted in Tehran-centricism that precluded sympathy with regional grievances. Ghassemi admitted the right of linguistic minorities to use their own language, observing that government repression of minorities could erupt into the destruction of the state, as had happened in the Ottoman Empire. However, he emphasized that

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linguistic diversity should not be permitted to be a divisive factor: "We should not allow fighting between the Turks and Persians to be used by our enemies. The workers need unity now." 26 The party organ, Rahbar (Leader), explained the Tudeh's distinct lack of revolutionary Communist content: Our e n e m i e s , e s p e c i a l l y S e y y e d Zia, a c c u s e us of being C o m m u n i s t s to frighten the Iranian capitalists and traders. This accusation is false. The T u d e h Party o f Iran is a constitutional party that adheres to the fundamental laws. Why? . . . C o m m u n i s m and socialism can be created only through the e x i s t e n c e of o b j e c t i v e c o n d i t i o n s in s o c i e t y that do not exist in Iran. 2 7

As part of its parliamentary approach, the Tudeh tried to form a broad national front with other political parties and figures before the elections for the Fourteenth Majlis, offering Mossadegh the leadership of this proposed national front to broaden its appeal. Mossadegh, habitually reluctant to associate with any political party, declined. 28 It was clear that the Tudeh leadership had resolved on cooperation with the bourgeoisie rather than class struggle. Until near the end of the war, class warfare was not discussed in the party's literature, even as a remote eventuality. In this period, in contrast to all other periods of Iranian communism, the party leadership espoused complete participation in the "bourgeois" parliamentary system. Early efforts to recruit workers to the Tudeh reduced its preponderance of young Tehrani middle-class intellectuals somewhat, but even in the 1950s, some 53 percent of the Tudeh was drawn from the intelligentsia, including a heavy percentage of teachers, civil servants, and university students. The Tudeh's organization and platform was, unlike that of most other parties at the time, a function of ideology rather than of personal interest. This gave the Tudeh a stability and an attraction that other parties lacked. A former Tudeh youth league member told the author: The Tudeh was the most progressive, most organized party in Iran at the time. The ruling class w a s corrupt and resisted any form of change. . . . The Tudeh g a v e us all a s e n s e of participation in the party's affairs, s i n c e the role of personalities . . . was m i n i m i z e d . It was the o n l y c o h e r e n t political organization that o n e could join that was sincerely trying to implement r e f o r m s . 2 9

The Tudeh's military network centered around a core group of Communist officers that had formed during the 1930s, including Colonel Siamak. New cells were established in 1943-1944; new members included Khosrow Ruzbeh and Major Iskandani. Ovanessian was placed in charge of the network of old and new officers' cells. Despite his constant personal clashes with Pishevari, Ovanessian remained extremely militant, as might be expected from his association with the

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old PCP and Sultanzadeh. Military training made the discipline, organization, secrecy, and centralism promoted by the Tudeh appealing, and the middle- and lower-middle-class background of the junior officers attracted them to the Tudeh's social and economic platfonm. 30 Partly in an effort to recruit a mass base of workers, Tudeh leaders organized the council of trade unions, CCFTU, in the autumn of 1941. Three-quarters of the initial membership of this organization were intellectuals, not workers. 31 The CCFTU organized and negotiated strikes in Tehran, Isfahan, and Mazandaran. Sanjabi later claimed that the Tudeh's influence was powerful enough to prevent any other party from attracting the workers. 32 The Tudeh and the CCFTU tried to spread their influence throughout the provinces, meeting with varying degrees of success: In general, Tudeh organizers found little support in rural areas, and greater support in the cities (see Table 7.1). The primary factor inhibiting rural recruitment efforts was the fact that Tudeh activists sent to the villages were ignorant of local language and customs and were too radical for the conservative rural environment. 33 As Abdol Samad Kambaksh admitted years later, it was difficult to find party cadres with the requisite knowledge of local dialects and conditions to appeal successfully to the peasants. The Tudeh's peasant union was probably the weakest of all its organizations; only 2 percent of the party membership at the time of the first congress were peasants. 34 Kurdistan, partly because of its rural nature, was one of the areas least receptive to Tudeh organizers. The Kurds' conservative, patrimonial social structure prevented the Tudeh from gaining a foothold. Following the lead of their chieftains, Kurdish tribesmen refused to permit the Tudeh to open branches in their villages. The conservative, nationalistic Komoleh leaders were likewise intolerant of Tudeh activities, and even of individuals thought to associate with the Tudeh. In the Bukan region, organizers recruited around 1,000 Kurdish villagers and forced the landlords to increase the peasants' share of the sugar beet harvest, but this success was isolated; the Tudeh was not able to build an organization in Kurdistan, in either British or Soviet zones of occupation. 35 Only in Gilan and western Mazandaran, where there was a substantial unsegmented middle peasantry, did the Tudeh have relative success among the peasants. In these provinces, however, its activities were hampered by racial animosity between the radical Azeri-speaking mohajers—whose political socialization had made them the most militant members of the early CCFTU— and the more conservative indigenous Gilanis and Mazandaranis. In Khuzistan, too, racial conflicts between workers erupted in bloodshed and prevented effective union organization. 36 Tudeh and CCFTU efforts to create a mass organization in Azerbaijan were facilitated by the province's relative urbanization. However, party efforts here, too, were stymied by ethnic divisions. In early 1942, the Tudeh opened not one but three clubs in Tabriz: one for tnohajcrs from the Caucasus! one for

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Table 7.1. Social Composition of Party Membership, First Party Congress, August 1944 % Workers Intelligentsia, government and office employees Peasants Total

18,750 5,750 500 25,000

75 23 2 100

Source: Kambaksh, [Survey of the Communist and Labor Movement in Iran], vol. 1, p. 29.

Armenians; and one for the local Azeri intellectuals. This indicated the strength of existing cultural rifts in Azerbaijan 3 7 that—particularly those between Christian and Moslem elements—gave the Tudeh special problems. The strong receptivity of Assyrians and Armenians to the Tudeh's platform of equality for religious minorities contributed to conservative Moslems' hostility. The British consul in Tabriz in 1944 observed: A s usual, it is the Assyrian c o m m u n i t y w h i c h is the m o s t restless and lends itself m o s t easily to leftist, pro-Russian m o v e m e n t s , such as the T u d e h . Their priests told m e o f their d i f f i c u l t y in restraining their hotheads from participating in politics and are full of fears for the safety of the Assyrian e l e m e n t when the M o s l e m s can again g i v e full rein to their pent-up fanaticism. 3 8

The Tudeh's appeal to religious minorities, as the British consul implied, aroused the animosities of the Moslem clergy. Seyyed Zia and the central government exploited the mullahs' hostility to stir up Moslems against the Tudeh. 39 The growing rift between Azerbaijani militants and the Tudeh organization was as notable as the ethnic divisions. Pishevari and Ovanessian continued their prison rivalry: An editorial in Pishevari's Azhir stated of the Tudeh leadership, "These intellectuals may be honorable men, but they obviously lack the experience and ability to lead a political movement." In 1943, at the height of Tudeh recruitment, Pishevari explained why he was not a member of any party: I k n o w better than anyone that a political party can grow only during a l o n g , protracted, harsh d a y - t o - d a y struggle. . . . I s e e no party o f substance at the present time. . . . Every party m e m b e r should protect the interests o f the class that he is representing. I d o not s e e that any party at the present is doing this. 4 0

The deprecation of the Tudeh's reformist, parliamentary approach was obvious. Ovanessian, by this time the head of the Tudeh in Azerbaijan, retorted by

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denouncing "an older prisoner who should remain unnamed" for treating the young Marxists arrogantly. He added that the former radicals who criticized the Tudeh were behaving like irresponsible provocateurs, alternating between ultraleft and ultralight slogans. 41 Eftekhari, who, like Pishevari, had developed a serious personal and political animosity against Ovanessian and the Fifty-Three, established his own union organization to rival CCFTU. Eftekhari's union, the Ettehadiyeh Kargaran va Barzegaran, or Union of Workers and Artisans (UWA), was attacked by the Tudeh as an organization of provocateurs because its policies were often more radical than those of the Tudeh. 42 Khalil Enghelab led the UWA's central board in Azerbaijan, which soon became a serious rival to the provincial council of the Union of Workers in Azerbaijan, the Tudeh's local labor organization. In December 1942, the latter denounced Enghelab's union as fraudulent and disclaimed any connection with it. M. Helal-Naseri undertook the task of drawing workers away from the UWA to the CCFTU, a task facilitated when Enghelab, at the central government's request, was forcibly removed from Tabriz in early 1943.43 While part of Enghelab's rivalry with the CCFTU affiliates stemmed from Eftekhari's personal-ideological conflict with the Tudeh leaders, part was due to the Tudeh's pro-Soviet foreign policy. Enghelab tried to organize strikes in Azerbaijan factories, which were producing war materiel for the Soviet forces. In this period, when the Tudeh advocated a united front, both party and CCFTU sought to minimize labor agitation in the war industry. In the same December 2, 1942, proclamation cited above, the CCFTU affiliate announced: The Union of Azerbaijan Workers from the dale of this proclamation calls upon all workers in local factories to remain at their jobs producing goods for the Red Army. If workers have any demands, they should present them to the local union [i.e., the CCFTU union], in order that they may be considered here or be forwarded to the Central Union in Tehran to be taken up there with the appropriate authorities. 4 4

Enghelab returned to Tabriz in August 1943 in an effort to revive his old union. He gave a speech asking why the sugar ration was 700 grams in Tehran and only 300 in Tabriz; he was promptly removed from Tabriz again. Eftekhari was arrested when he went to Tabriz to continue Enghelab's work. The Soviets disowned the workers' protests over Eftekhari's arrest. The CCFTU finally eliminated the threat posed by its rival in April 1944, when the UWA, under Enghelab's leadership, merged with the CCFTU. The merged union then sent a telegram to Tabriz announcing that Eftekhari had been expelled and had no authority to act on behalf of his union. Enghelab was shortly ousted from the merged union for his "ultraleftist" views and actions. 45 The consolidation of the two unions reflects the CCFTU's increasing efforts to exert centralized control over all locals. In June 1944, the central council warned

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local union chapters not to act without written authorization from Tehran; a year later, the CCFTU's governing body resolved to grant more power to the executive board, "so that all labor unions throughout Iran [would] operate like an orderly machine and a single body." 46 By the autumn of 1944, the consolidated labor union claimed 100,000 workers in branches in most of Iran's industrial centers.47 True to its publicly proclaimed plans to participate in parliamentary politics, the Tudeh vigorously joined in the 1943-1944 elections for the Fourteenth Majlis. Its reformist platform, emphasizing a strong central government that would ensure Iranian integrity and independence, was reminiscent of Haydar Khan's theses. The 1943-1944 elections, while unusually free by Iranian standards, were marred by a number of local poll-fixings. Prime Minister Ali Soheili and his interior minister, Tadayon, interfered to have the candidates of their choice elected in several districts. The British, in order to ensure the election of their protégé Seyyed Zia, imprisoned his opponent for the Yazd seat in the Majlis; they also arrested Sanjabi, the Iran Party's candidate in southern Kurdistan, to facilitate the election of the head of the Kohlar tribe, a traditional rival of the Sanjab tribe.48 When the parliament convened in the spring of 1944, Mossadegh attacked Seyyed Zia's credentials, accusing him of having engineered the 1921 coup d'état for the British. Yet, when the Tudeh deputies supported Mossadegh's attack, he demanded that they withdraw their objection to Seyyed Zia's credentials. Mossadegh clearly regarded any association with the Tudeh as a potential embarrassment and wished to be known as a strict nonpartisan independent 49 This event illustrates the difficulty of joint action among the highly individualistic Iranian politicians of the day, even when they had common goals. The Tudeh had sponsored twenty-three candidates in the election, including three non-Tudeh members; these three were all Azerbaijanis: two veterans of Khiabani's Democratic movement and Pishevari, who had formed an electoral alliance with the Tudeh at the last moment. Counting Pishevari, ten of these candidates were elected. The Tudeh fraksiun, though a small minority in the parliament, was so well-organized and so well-disciplined, that it exerted an influence out of proportion to the party's numbers.50 The representative of the Mahabad region was Abol Qasim Sadr-i Qazi, Qazi Mohammad's younger brother. Although not a Tudeh member, he did usually vote with the party.51 After Pishevari complained in the Majlis of Azerbaijan's impoverishment by the central government, the parliament rejected his credentials. Interestingly, while Mossadegh opposed Pishevari's rejection, two Tudeh deputies, including Ovanessian, apparently joined in requesting his ouster.52 As Habib Ladjevardi observed, "his expulsion . . . confirmed his constituents' conviction that no redress was to be gained from Tehran, whether the government was representative or autocratic." 53 In Tabriz, dissatisfaction with the new government spread rapidly. Enghelab was arrested (again with the consent of the

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Soviet consul-general) for making speeches supporting Pishevari and a number of labor issues. 54 The Tudeh's insistence on centralization resulted in serious neglect of the Azerbaijanis' requests for linguistic and political autonomy within the party framework. Pishevari, whose personal antagonism to many party leaders made it impossible for a unified party to absorb him, was held in special distrust. The First Party Congress, held in August 1944, refused even to consider Pishevari's credentials as a delegate from Azerbaijan: His strong adherence to old PCP principles and his insistence on provincial concerns made him unacceptable to the parliamentarian, Tehrani Tudeh leadership. 55 On the eve of this congress, Khalil Maleki, a Persianized Azeri disciple of Arani, went to Azerbaijan to investigate the conflicting reports on the party's status, already emerging from the province. At the congress, he reported his shock that many party militants could not understand Farsi and were antagonized by Maleki's refusal to speak Azeri. He had formed the suspicion that some party leaders in Azerbaijan were concealing their "true separatist aims" under the guise of seeking provincial assemblies, Azeri schools, and a higher share of tax funds. 56 Forty-three of the 168 delegates at the congress were from Azerbaijan; thirty-four others were Azeris from elsewhere in northern Iran, primarily mohajers from the Caspian region. Some were unable or unwilling to communicate in Farsi, so the meetings had to be bilingual; the Azeri speakers almost all delivered their speeches in Turkic. The Azerbaijani delegation, complaining vociferously of the party's neglect of their province's grievances, were united in criticizing the party in general and the central committee in particular. A delegate from Sarab complained that the central committee had often underestimated and misunderstood provincial needs; a Gilani agreed, testifying that, though he was a Persian intellectual unable to speak a word of Azeri, he had been sent to organize workers and peasants in Azerispeaking Zanjan. The militant mohajer peasant organizer Gulamyahyah Daneshyan, speaking in Azeri, denounced the party's linguistic and reformist policies: One of the biggest shortcomings of party activities in Azerbaijan is that the propaganda is in Farsi, whereas in Azerbaijan the people don't speak Farsi. . . . W e must take advantage of the class antagonism that has developed between the peasants and the landlords in Azerbaijan. 57

Azeri delegates demanded to know why the party did not take advantage of Azerbaijan's potential for revolutionary action. "The Party," Daneshyan agreed, "should talk less and act more." 58 While Daneshyan and other Azeris complained that the Tudeh was excessively centralist and reformist, delegates from other provinces criticized the Azeri Communists' radicalism and freedom from central committee control. A Mazandaran delegate complained that the party had failed to control its committees in the Caspian region, which had fallen under the control of radical

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(primarily Azeri) mohajers. The mohajers, he claimed, were alienating the masses because of their ignorance of local language and conditions. 59 The Azeris' lobbying did prompt the Tudeh to make some concessions. As a result of the congress, local branches were permitted to hold rallies for the formation of anjomans. Party manifestos were translated into Azeri and Turkic, and the party promised to encourage the Majlis to allocate more funds for Azerbaijan. 60 However, the party program continued to emphasize centralised leadership and ignore the whole subject of provincial councils and the linguistic issue. "Complete educational and religious freedom" was promised to minorities; however, since they were left undefined, the implication was that the minorities referred to were religious, not linguistic.61 Until the oil crisis of 1944, the pro-Soviet Tudeh foreign policy had no great impact on the party's public relations. During the crisis, however, the Tudeh, by agitating in favor of an oil concession to the Soviets, publicly associated itself with the Soviet Union. After the fall of 1944, the Tudeh's relationship with nationalists, such as Mossadegh, worsened because of its support for the Soviet concession. Also, after this period the Tudeh began demonstrating hostility to the national bourgeoisie, which it had previously courted.

The 1944 Oil Crisis and the Great Powers The oil crisis of 1944 began when Standard Vacuum, Sinclair, and Shell—U.S. companies—negotiated for concessions in northern Iran; the clandestine negotiations brought a swift Soviet response. In September 1944, Kavtaradze, Soviet vice-commissar for foreign affairs, arrived in Tehran and asked for an oil concession in all border provinces. Prime Minister Mohammad Saed rejected consideration of all oil demands until after the war. 62 These events illustrate the evolution of the respective policies of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Britain toward Iran. During the later years of World War II, U.S. foreign policy was evolving from noninterference in the internal affairs of Middle Eastern countries to the conclusion that active involvement was necessary to reduce British imperialism. In March 1943, a State Department paper drafted by George V. Allen stressed that the U.S. open-door policy in the oil-rich Middle East would be even more important in the future: Today, the United States is rapidly approaching a change from an oil exporting nation to an importer, due to the great depletion of American oil reserves as a result of our contribution to the present war. W e are consequently much more interested now . . . in maintaining our access to the resources of an area said to contain 4 0 per cent of the remaining petroleum reserves of the world. 6 3

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U.S. policy in Iran, as Cordell Hull described it, had "a more distinctly selfish point of view," since it was in the interests of the United States that "no government power be established on the Persian Gulf opposite the important American petroleum development in Saudi Arabia," 64 where growing U.S. economic interest was a major factor in U.S. desires for a stable, independent Iran. As the war came to an end, it was increasingly clear to the State Department that some U.S. intervention in Iranian internal affairs would, paradoxically, be necessary to ensure that other countries, particularly Britain, did not continue to enjoy political hegemony there. 65 The U.S. ambassador to Iran, Louis Dreyfus, contrasted British policy with that of the United States: "Relations based on force and exploitation rather than on mutual help and good will do not pay dividends when the day of reckoning arrives."66 U.S. involvement in Iran was facilitated by Qavam's 1942 premiership. As in 1921, Qavam took several measures to introduce U.S. influence into Iran. Following the traditional course of the old school of Iranian politicians, he sought the involvement of a third power to create equilibrium, bringing the U.S. financial advisor Millspaugh back to Iran and making a U.S. major, H. Norman Schwartzkopf, the head of the gendarmes. U.S. troops also entered Iran during his premiership. 6 7 The U.S. government listed the proposed oil concession in the north as part of its evolving program for "a strong and independent Iran," which would facilitate such U.S. interests as "the possibility of sharing more fully in Iran's commerce and in the development of its resources; the strategic location of Iran for civil air bases; and the growing importance of Iranian and Arabian oil fields." 68 Thus, while the United States sought to dismember the British empire and enforce the "open door," this "idealistic" policy had a strong strategic and material component. The British endeavored to preserve their interests in Iran against encroachment by either the United States or the Soviet Union. Britain, Churchill insisted in a letter to Roosevelt, wanted no zone of influence in Iran, only a friendly government in Tehran. 69 In order to ensure such a "friendly government," the British generally sided with the one group in Iran that had proved its ability to maintain power: the ruling oligarchy. This alliance resulted in British attempts to preserve the social status quo in Iran, as witnessed by the extreme conservative program of Seyyed Zia's National Will Party. Britain also supported various tribal leaders and became very active in tribal affairs, including those in southern Kurdistan. Because government authority had collapsed in the British zone of occupation much as it had in the Soviet zone, tribal cooperation was necessary to maintain order. "In general," a U.S. intelligence report noted, "the British may be said to favor a retention of feudal patrimonialism by tribal leaders, rather than a broad social and economic education for the tribespeople." 70 British statesmen were often irritated by what they perceived as obstructionist tactics on the part of U.S. advisors in Iran. The Foreign Office official Ivor Pink warned that "any American advisor appointed by the Persians

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may tend to side with them against the alleged imperialist policy of ourselves and the Russians." 7 1 While the British wanted to prevent the Soviets from obtaining an oil concession in the north, they did not wish to do so by giving the United States a financial interest in Iranian affairs. Such a financial interest would undoubtedly have led to usurpation of Britain's political influence. 72 Soviet leaders were rather indifferent to the U.S.-British conflict emerging in the oil crisis. While Iranians such as Qavam may have regarded the United States as a "neutral" third power, the Soviets perceived the Western powers as equally inimical to their security interests. The evolving relations among the Great Powers, especially in the Soviet view, joined the Western powers against them. The fact that the partially British-owned firm, Shell, was joining U.S. firms in requesting oil concessions probably confirmed this perception, as did Saed's reputation for anti-Soviet sentiments. 73 The Saed government's attempt to promote equilibrium by granting an oil concession to a U.S. firm was seen as a one-sided equilibrium, in the tradition of Reza Shah's hostile policy toward the Soviet Union. It is in this context that the Soviet reaction to the U.S. attempt to obtain an oil concession in northern Iran must be understood. As Kennan, the U.S. chargé d'affaires in Moscow, explained, "The oil in northern Iran is important, not as something Russia needs, but as something that might be dangerous for anyone else to exploit." 74 The British consul in Mashad, Sir Claremont Skrine, summarized the Soviet reaction to the U.S. involvement: "It was . . . above all, the efforts of Standard Vacuum and Shell to secure oilprospecting rights that changed the Russians in Persia from hot-war allies into cold-war rivals." 7 5 This rivalry would become more apparent during the revolutions in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. After Saed's refusal to consider the Soviet request, the Soviets and the Tudeh joined in a propaganda war against the Iranian government. In an October 24 press conference, Kavtaradze said that "the disloyal and inimical attitude of the Iranian prime minister in regard to the Soviet Union precludes all possibility of . . . cooperation with him." 7 6 On October 31, 1944, a Soviet radio commentator stated that "the worsening of Irano-Soviet relations is the work of shameless Iranian statesmen . . . who have converted Iran into a base for an attack on the Soviet Union." 77 The Tudeh held massive rallies in favor of an oil concession to the Soviet Union and in opposition to the Saed government. The Tudeh deputy Fereydoun Keshavarz explained in the Majlis that the party was attempting to neutralize British influence in Iran by introducing a Soviet political and economic presence. 78 The Tudeh organized massive protest marches against the Saed government in Tehran, Isfahan, and other major cities; its affiliated newspapers joined the attack. External pressure from the Soviet Union combined with internal pressure from Tudeh and Mossadegh-led Majlis independents to bring down the Saed cabinet. During the 1944 oil crisis, Mossadegh began to promote negative equilibrium, describing the Soviets' demand for an oil concession as a reaction

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to the United States' previous negotiations. Citing the history of events from the D'Arcy concession to the Russo-British Treaty of 1907, he argued against giving concessions to either power, "because it is impossible to separate economic affairs from political ones": 7 9 If the government of the United States, from the other side of the world, can ask for a concession, why shouldn't the Soviet Union? . . . Those people who think that, because America is not our neighbor, giving a concession to American companies is free from danger are mistaken. 8 0

The Soviet presence, Mossadegh said, was a counterweight to the British and had given Iran breathing room. However, he said, "If you mean by 'positive equilibrium' that whatever concession your neighbors want must be given to them, then Iranian independence will soon vanish." 8 1 Negative equilibrium, previously suggested by Mudarres during the Gilan crisis, b e c a m e the ideological mainstay of Mossadegh and his supporters, and later of the National Front. After the fall of the Saed government, Morteza Bayat, the candidate initially favored by Britain and the pro-Western faction in the Majlis, became prime minister. He attempted to restore equilibrium to Iran's foreign relations by softening the government's attitude toward the Soviet Union. His pursuit of equilibrium often approached Mossadegh's "negative" model; Bayat presided over the passage of a bill Mossadegh sponsored, which provided a stiff jail term for any prime minister negotiating oil concessions without prior Majlis approval. 8 2 Bayat soon came into conflict with Millspaugh, whose extensive control of Iran's finances was inhibiting the government's attempts to expand the army. Millspaugh's financial reforms were resented by the royalists in the Majlis; his close association with Seyyed Zia led Mossadegh's neutralists and the left, particularly the Tudeh, to attack him as an agent of the United States. Forging a curious alliance b e t w e e n these two disparate factions, Bayat supported Mossadegh's parliamentary initiative for Millspaugh's expulsion. 8 3 As a result of Millspaugh's ouster, Bayat gained the support of the Tudeh and lost that of the pro-Western faction. T o consolidate his support among his new allies, he made various conciliatory gestures toward the Tudeh, including limiting police actions against T u d e h demonstrations. While the shah approved of Bayat's strategy f o r restoring internal e q u i l i b r i u m , m a n y royalists v i e w e d it as "flirtatious of fanatical communists." 8 4 Having aroused the deepest fears of the pro-Western faction and many royalists, Bayat's government fell in April 1945. Bayat's immediate successor was Ibrahim Hakimi, a weak but respected Azerbaijani politician who was chosen primarily because (though he had a reputation for supporting British interests) he was affiliated with—and therefore opposed b y — n o party. Hakimi tried to preserve his lukewarm popularity by

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choosing a cabinet that lacked party affiliations. This policy, however, alienated all parties in the Majlis, and the first Hakimi government fell without being formally installed. 85 Mohsen Sadr—once described by the British ambassador as a "stiff, reactionary ex-mullah" notorious for his participation in the justice system under three previous shahs—became the next premier. The Majlis refused to confirm his appointment by royal farman, or decree. The Majlis progressives, including the Tudeh, Sadr-i Qazi, and Mossadegh's faction, boycotted the Majlis from June to September, in order to prevent the convention of a quorum necessary for the confirmation of a government. Sadr blithely continued to exercise the authority of the premiership on the basis of the farman. To no avail, Mossadegh continued to insist on the strict application of the constitution, including the shah's noninterference in army and other government affairs as well as the maintenance of the parliament's prerogatives. He particularly opposed a bill, passed under Sadr's administration, that postponed the elections for the Fifteenth Majlis until all foreign troops had left. He sarcastically observed that no foreign troops were in Iran under Reza Shah, and Iran nonetheless did not enjoy free elections. Electoral reform, he said, was desperately needed, but electoral delay was not. He also noted that the Soviets would assume that a delay was aimed against them. 86 The Sadr government was pro-British in foreign policy and, as might be gathered from Sadr's attitude to the constitution, extremely repressive in internal affairs. In August 1945, the Tudeh military network in Khorasan—the most radical segment of the party—revolted, fearing the reestablishment of dictatorship. Major Iskandani, who planned and organized the revolt, sought to emulate Tito's tactics and politics in Yugoslavia. He wanted to create a zone in which the government would have to contend with organized partisan resistance. Unfortunately, Khorasan did not provide a favorable climate for revolutionary activities. It was a great Shi'ite religious center and was furthermore fragmented into a myriad of ethnic, linguistic, and religious communities. Turkman tribesmen did not give Iskandani's group the support he had hoped to obtain, and the Tudeh officers were suppressed in Gonbade Kavus. 87 Many members of the Tudeh military network, including Khosrow Ruzbeh, were arrested in the aftermath of the Khorasan incident. Ruzbeh's statement while on trial aptly summarized the radicalism of the military network: "The Tudeh is a reformist and parliamentary party. . . . I, however . . . want a revolution to destroy the corrupt ruling class." 88 The CCFTU organ Zafar (Victory) suggested that, in view of the Sadr government's total unresponsiveness, it might be necessary to overthrow it by force. Citing the Khorasan revolt as a pretext, the Sadr government placed Tehran under martial law and suppressed fourteen newspapers, including Zafar.i9

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Revolution in the North The general instability in Tehran facilitated the development of the revolutions in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, provinces that were continually voicing discontent. The government had been unable (and often unwilling) to offer any redress. Sadr's one-sided foreign policy alarmed the Soviets, and his repression of internal dissent disturbed reformers and revolutionaries in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. During Sadr's premiership, revolution took root in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. The economic situation in Azerbaijan was increasingly bad. There had been serious hardships in 1941 and 1942 as the result of bad harvests, but in later years, good harvests did not ameliorate the situation. Although Azerbaijan produced a quarter of Iran's wheat, much of this produce went south to Tehran and other cities, where it drew a higher price. Food rations were higher in Tehran than in Tabriz; the government was more concerned with preventing unrest in the capital than in the provinces. The upper bourgeoisie had profited from the war, which eliminated foreign competition at the same time as it drew orders to Iranian factories for war materiel. 9 0 As World War II came to an end, Soviet orders for war supplies stopped coming, and local factories shut down, creating massive urban unemployment. Ebling, the U.S. consul in Tabriz, described the May Day parade in 1944: These under-privileged people, in their rags and tatters, many without shoes, accompanied by their infants and children showing signs of malnutrition and disease, presented a depressing sight. It is doubtful if a more unprepossessing crowd of humanity could be assembled in any other part of the world."

The privileged class was rather indifferent to the plight of these poor people, whom Ebling judged to compose 44 percent of the city's population. He explained the wealthy Tabrizis' arrogant worldview: "God has created different classes of people; servants to be servants, merchants to be merchants, peasants to be peasants, and the higher classes to direct and manage." 92 The central government also ignored the pleas of Majlis deputies— including Pishevari during his brief tenure—for greater government attention to the bleak state of affairs in Azerbaijan. On June 11, 1944, Pishevari, who seemed genuinely distressed, had complained: At present Tabriz has been transformed into a ruined village. The city hospitals have been closed for the past six months. . . . In Tabriz there are only twenty-seven primary and high schools, of which only six are state-run. . . . I have seen most of them closely myself. You would not be willing to lodge even your horse in those quarters. 93

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Ovanessian tried to inspire the peasants to class warfare, sending party cadres into the villages to advocate land reform, denounce the gendarmes, and persuade sharecroppers to limit the landlords' share to a fifth of the harvest. Since landlords and factory owners had profited so conspicuously during the war, the Tudeh under Ovanessian's leadership did not view them as potential allies in an anti-imperialist struggle. 94 With Ovanessian's prodding, Azerbaijan erupted in fits of violence during the summer of 1945. Landlords and peasants menaced one another with force. Thirty landlords in villages near Tabriz telegrammed the central government that they would have no wheat to sell to the state unless the gendarmes used force to collect the harvest. 9 5 In response, the central government arrested 500 peasants who had refused to pay the landlords' share and give them free labor and additional payment in kind. The Sadr government had decreed that the peasants' labor obligations had to be honored "in conformity with the principle of private ownership." 96 On August 1, 1945, a Tudehsponsored telegram to Sadr and the Majlis asked that these peasants be freed and that the government not side with the landlords. Sadr replied in the Majlis: "Gentlemen, I am telling you that not only will I not pay attention to this telegram; but even a hundred telegrams of this sort, 1 shall ignore." 97 The Tudeh organization in Tehran was unable to do anything about Azerbaijan's plight; further, it was not always interested in tending to minority grievances. Pishevari was highly critical of the Tudeh's parliamentary stance as well as Ovanessian's policy of instigating class warfare in Azerbaijan, saying that a movement to obtain freedom for the province would have to encompass all classes. In July 1945, he told friends in Tehran that since he saw no future for the Tudeh it was time to start a new organization. Within days of this announcement, he left for Azerbaijan, 98 where he was aided in his quest for a "new organization" by three fellow Azeris from the old PCP: Ali Shabistari, who edited the newspaper Azerbaijan; Salamollah Javid, who had been imprisoned around the same time as Pishevari; and Ja'far Kaviyan, an experienced labor organizer. Shabistari had participated in the Khiabani revolt, Javid, a veteran of the Gilan revolution, had taken part in the Lahuti and Khiabani revolts, as had Kaviyan. Javid had been educated in Baku, and both he and Shabistari had resided in the Soviet Union after their respective revolutionary endeavors had failed. 99 None had ever joined the Tudeh. On September 3, 1945, Pishevari and these three experienced revolutionaries announced the formation of the Firqeh Demokrat-i Azerbaijan, or the Azerbaijan Democratic Party (ADP). The adoption of the name of Khiabani's organization stressed the new party's devotion to provincial autonomy. Pishevari's ADP, without prior consultation with the Tudeh's central committee, dissolved and absorbed the provincial Tudeh. Mohammad Biriya, the militant head of the CCFTU in Azerbaijan, assisted in dissolving and incorporating the Tudeh labor union. Needless to say, the central committee members, including Ovanessian and Maleki, were disturbed by Pishevari's

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actions and alarmed by the possible separatism of the militants. As soon as the news of the Azerbaijan Tudeh's dissolution reached Tehran, the central committee and the inspection committee held emergency meetings. The majority endorsed Maleki's resolution, which overruled the disbandment of the provincial organization and referred to the Democratic Party, not the Azerbaijan Democratic Party—pointedly refusing to accept the ADP's ethnic identity. The following morning, the Soviet embassy intervened to prevent the Tudeh leaders from issuing their declaration. The Soviets persuaded the Tudeh that it would fragment the Iranian left and the entire international socialist movement. 100 In public, therefore, Tudeh leaders minimized their opposition to the ADP, attempting to preserve a semblance of unity on the left to confront the Sadr government. 10 ' As part of this tenuous united front endeavor, the Tudeh organ No Ruzeh Iran (A New Day for Iran) proclaimed on October 17, "Long live the courageous people of Azerbaijan, avant garde of liberty in Iran." 102 The ADP's first proclamation declared that Azerbaijan had a right to national autonomy, to its own provincial and city councils, and the right to use its own language in the schools. Various social and economic reforms were also requested, including government measures against unemployment, opening of trade routes (which would encourage petty bourgeois and peasant traders), and measures to ameliorate the peasant-landlord relationship. Confiscation of government lands and that of landlords who had "escaped" Azerbaijan was also advocated. 103 Conditions were ripe for implementing the new program. As the British consul observed: The contempt in which the incompetent and corrupt local government is held by all classes, and a growing feeling of indifference of the Central Government to Azerbaijan, may lead even the right-wing to take the view that the measures urged by the Tudeh [i.e., A D P ] cannot make conditions any worse than they are at present. 1 0 4

Indeed, at the end of September, the first ADP Party Congress convened a broad cross section of Azerbaijan's population. In this period, the national revolutionary element in the ADP clearly outweighed the social revolutionary. Liberal elements in Tabriz were reportedly apprehensive about possible reprisals by reactionary elements after Soviet troops withdrew, and the autonomous status the ADP advocated for Azerbaijan would have protected them. In the beginning, most revolutionaries focused on the national element in the Azerbaijan revolution, while a minority focused on class. The former, including Javid and Shabistari and many members of Khiabani's ADP, criticized the Tudeh for its class orientation; the latter, including Daneshyan and most other mohajers and PCP veterans, criticized the Tudeh for its parliamentarism, which precluded revolution. 105 In the revolutionary platfoim, the issue given the clearest treatment was Azerbaijan's rights to its own language and local anjomans. Nosratollah Jahanshahlou, later Pishevari's deputy premier, wrote

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that this policy was deliberate: "In order to unite the population in a [national] revolutionary struggle, there must be factors linking the people together. Some of those factors are race . . . and language." 106 Language was deliberately selected as a social force uniting all classes in Azerbaijan; on that and on the formation of provincial anjomans all of the ADP leaders were in agreement. The class content of the ADP platform was minimized. Pishevari, because of his experience in the failure of class struggle during the Gilan revolution, was determined to attract the support of many sectors of society. 107 The ADP set out to establish control over Azerbaijan, refusing to accept the governor sent by Sadr and forming its own militia. By mid-November, arms were distributed among the party and the peasantry. Armed insurrection against the central government began on November 4. 108 The Red Army and the Baku Soviet authorities has assisted in supplying weapons. Pishevari explained his reliance on the Soviet Union as a necessary means of achieving revolution. The oil crisis had created conditions favorable for obtaining Soviet support for the Azerbaijani cause. 109 On November 15, the ADP Central Committee sent an open letter to Tehran and all foreign consulates stating: The Central Government at Tehran perpetuates the worst and most violent Asiatic despotism. . . . The sufferings as related by these oppressed and outraged [Azerbaijani] people would affect anyone, w h o without doubt would report to his democratic nation that in the present world there still exists a Government . . . where the laws, courts, and prosecutors arc the tools of a group of reactionary, a b s o l u t e adventurers. 110

There followed a very specific list of incidents illustrating the gendarmes' brutality; the letter concluded with a demand that the offenders be prosecuted and that gendarmes be prohibited from interference in legal matters in the future. 111 On November 20, the People's Congress of Azerbaijan, attended by 700 delegates, met in a Tabriz theater; the congress sent a declaration of autonomy to the central government, emphasizing that "the nation of Azerbaijan has no desire to separate itself from Iran or to harm the territorial integrity of Iran," but at the same time announcing: "The people of Azerbaijan [have] distinct national, linguistic, cultural, and traditional characteristics, [that] entitle Azerbaijan to freedom and autonomy, as promised to all nations by the Atlantic Charter." 112 This ambivalence was also expressed in articles proclaiming Azerbaijan's intent to participate in "the central government's operations by electing deputies to the Majlis and paying taxes," while asserting that, "like other nations," it had the right to "form its own government and administer its internal and national affairs." The congress proclaimed itself a constituent assembly and appointed a committee to implement its resolutions until a national assembly could be convened. 113

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In Kurdistan, too, affairs were coming to a head; Komoleh agitation for an independent Kurdistan continued. During World War II, northern Kurdistan had enjoyed uninterrupted trade with the Soviet Union, particularly in tobacco, enabling the Kurdish economy—stifled under Reza Shah's rigid economic controls—to flourish. Thus economic interests coincided with ethnic grievances to encourage the Iranian Kurds' quest for independence. In October 1944, the Komoleh increased its chances for attaining government power by inviting Qazi Mohammad, the popular religious judge of Mahabad, to join the organization. Qazi's formal education was limited to a religious primary school, but his readings from his father's extensive library had made him fairly knowledgeable about world affairs. Like Kuchik Khan, Qazi was a nationalist, though in his case the nation was Kurdistan, not Iran. Also like the Jangali leader, Qazi's political socialization was that of a devout Moslem clergyman. His views on politics and economics were generally conservative, but he saw the need for moderate political and economic liberalization. Qazi joined the Komoleh enthusiastically and became the party's principal spokesman and guide, though he was never elccted to its central committee. 114 Kurdish culture, which had flourished since the Allied invasion, was vital to the intensified nationalism of 1945. A Kurdish opera called Daik i Nishtiman, or Motherland, depicting the tragedy of the Kurdish people, played to full houses in Mahabad for several months. 1 1 5 Actual insurrection required more groundwork, but the gathering storm in Azerbaijan gave the Komoleh hopes that Pishevari's ADP would be an ally. On September 3, a Komoleh deputation including Qazi attended the Tabriz ceremony in which the Tudeh was offically absorbed into the ADP. 116 Qazi and the Komoleh leaders, though intent on achieving a Kurdish state, knew that bravery alone could not establish their independence. The material and political support of a superpower was necessary. When Britain rejected their claims and the United States failed to express any interest, the oil crisis and the central government's anti-Soviet attitude convinced the Komoleh that the time was propitious for an alliance with the Soviet Union against Tehran. 1 1 7 In September 1945, a Komoleh delegation headed by Qazi visited Baku. Ja'far Baghirov, the Azeri prime minister of the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic, first suggested that Kurdish aspirations be achieved in the framework of Azerbaijani autonomy. Baghirov was particularly devoted to the cause of the revolution in Iranian Azerbaijan and supported the belief prevailing among Azeris that Kurdistan was part of Azerbaijan. Qazi insisted that the Kurds were determined to enjoy their own autonomy, without Azerbaijani tutelage. Baghirov then conceded the Kurdish position, proclaiming, "As long as the Soviet Union exists the Kurds will have their independence." Qazi made it clear that the Kurds would require more than token support, and Baghirov promised that military equipment and a printing press would be sent to Mahabad. 118

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On Qazi's return to Mahabad, the Komoleh, following Baghirov's advice, changed its name to the Hizbeh Dimukrat-i Kurdistan, or Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP). The party congress of the new KDP, held in November 1945, produced a nationalist manifesto that insisted on the autonomy of the Kurdish nation within the Iranian state, and the use of Kurdish as its official language. It advocated a provincial anjoman to supervise governmental affairs, and regularization of landlord-peasant relationships. Revenue collected in Kurdistan was to be spent there, and agriculture, trade, education, and public health were to be promoted. The influence of the more radical contemporaneous movement in Azerbaijan was evident in the party's advocacy of the regularization of landlordpeasant relationships. However, this was the only platform plank that could have been construed as an economic reform. Qazi, as a Moslem clergyman, regarded the principle of private property as sacred. The KDP, even more than the ADP, had a reformist platform, emphasizing local autonomy, linguistic freedom, and the expansion of education. This revolution was nationalist, not social. The Kurdish Democrats' hope of obtaining an alliance with Azerbaijan was also evident in an article of the KDP program that stated: "The Democratic Party of Kurdistan shall make every effort to create unity and solidarity among Kurds, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, and Assyrians." 119 The fact that this was stated so emphatically shows that Qazi saw the danger that traditional rivalries posed to the prospective Kurdish state. However, though the KDP sought an alliance with the revolutionaries in Azerbaijan, Qazi and his followers insisted that Azerbaijan and Kurdistan were separate states. The Kurds had fiercely resented Reza Shah's administrative amalgamation, though the Azeris were quite willing to consider Kurdistan as part of their own territory. Cities such as Rezaieh— largely Azeri but with strong Kurdish minorities—remained sites of conflict between the two revolutionary movements. 120 By the end of 1945, both Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, spurred by the Iranian government's refusal to consider their claims, had declared their autonomy. The government in Tehran sent troops to reestablish its hegemony, but Soviet troops blocked their advance, giving the indigenous governments a chance to mobilize their own forces. In their decision to support the revolutions in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, the Soviets had ideological as well as pragmatic motives. As in 1921, the Soviets did not support all rebellions against the central government but chose among several; the choices they made are suggestive. There were other revolts in northern Iran in this period: In Gilan, a resurgent Jangal party staged an armed uprising at the end of 1945; the Jamiyat-i Tabaristan—Association of Mazandaran—demanded autonomy in Mazandaran; the officers' revolt in Khorasan has already been mentioned. But the Soviet Union never supported these movements. The rebels in Gilan were led by landlords and the upper bourgeoisie who demanded only local autonomy. Although this movement had

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ties to Kuchik Khan's movement, it, like the "feudal" landlords who had failed to obtain Soviet support in 1920-1921, was deemed ideologically unacceptable; it was apparently considered reactionary. The Association of Mazandaran, though it demanded "social reform to benefit all classes," was devoid of support in rural areas; the officers in Khorasan, while perhaps also ideologically acceptable to the Soviets, were similarly lacking in a social base in that highly conservative, segmented province. 121 In Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, however, the revolutions were led by elements voicing democratic nationalist demands. Furthermore, they were supported by many peasants as well as the middle classes. As noted in previous chapters, Communist ideology usually advocated a bourgeoisdemocratic revolution in backward countries such as Iran. The ADP and KDP, like Kuchik's Jangal movement, were acceptable on ideological grounds; pragmatism also suggested that a social base was necessary for a successful revolution. Here, too, the revolutions in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, like the Jangal movement of 1920-1921, proved themselves worthy of support. The northern unrest arose because of the central government's mass alienation of the provinces' populations, which coincided with a severe attenuation of government control over the provinces during the Allied occupation. As in Gilan, foreign intervention and a power vacuum facilitated revolution. The Tehran government's unresponsiveness contributed: The oligarchy established by Reza Shah clung tenaciously to power and resisted social reform. Even liberal nationalists such as Kasravi or Mossadegh, though they urged social reform, were so insistent on a strong, centralized Iran that they opposed local autonomy; the Tudeh similarly emphasized national unity. Reza Shah's governmental legacy was a dangerous degree of Tehran-centricism, which influenced almost all political factions. The concept of equilibrium in foreign affairs was again becoming central to Iranian politics, as it had been in 19201921. The promoters of equilibrium rejected the one-sided policy that had antagonized the Soviets. Many, including Mossadegh, concluded that Iranian independence could be preserved only through negative equilibrium in foreign policy. Soviet support of the indigenous revolutions clearly helped them to flourish. The overall Soviet policy was to prevent any other power from establishing political and economic hegemony over Iran, especially in the north. The Soviets' main objective was strategic security, which would be facilitated by attaining equilibrium with the West in Iran. Since the central government was, in the Soviet view, consistently anti-Soviet in its foreign relations, the Soviets sought to prevent the Tehran government from reestablishing its hegemony over the strategic provinces of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan. However, the Soviets were not always unified. The Azerbaijan Soviet Republic, under Baghirov's leadership, adamantly championed Azerbaijan's autonomy, whereas the Foreign Ministry under Molotov was cautious about the international implications of the northern revolutions. As in 1921, many Soviet leaders felt

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that the strategic and political interests of their country and the international Communist movement were best served by a unified Iran. Britain, as in the earlier period, was attempting to preserve its political hegemony over all Iran by bolstering the ruling class; if this proved impossible, they would, as will be seen, settle for maintaining their influence and economic interests in the south. The U.S. policy was to promote an open door in Iran, an "idealistic" policy pursued largely because of the dividends it was expected to pay, in terms of Iranian goodwill as well as economic gains. U.S. involvement in Iran increased in the immediate postwar period, as policymakers realized that active intervention was necessary to open the Middle East to U.S. interests. The policies of the governments in Tehran, Moscow, Baku, London, and Washington interacted with the development of the revolutions in the northern provinces to affect their outcomes, but, though clearly affected by global politics, the provincial revolutions would not have taken place if Reza Shah's autocratic political system had succeeded in integrating ethnic minorities into the Iranian nation. Although the persistent racial segmentation that resurfaced after Reza Shah's departure helped cause the revolutions in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, it would also contribute to their eventual failure. Political friction between the nationalist revolutionaries and the increasingly class-oricnted Tudch also played a role in their internal collapse. Political and ethnic divisions between and within the Azerbaijani and Kurdish revolutions were already apparent.

Oil, Iran, and the Cold War Events in Iran were part of an overall shift during World War II, from global alliance to the cold war. However, Iran was not simply a passive theater for Great Power rivalry; its government, particularly under Premier Qavam, played a vital role in shaping the Great Powers' relations with one another. The perceptions of each other that Great Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Iran formed in this period had a significant effect on subsequent international relations, which, in turn, had a considerable impact on Iran's internal politics. The Tehran government, throughout the crisis in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, concentrated its efforts on removing Soviet troops and support from northern Iran. The reason for this focus on diplomatic activity was, plainly, that the central government regarded the northern revolutions as results of Soviet interference. Many independent politicians and intellectuals in the capital, as Iranian nationalists, shared with their government an aversion to the revolutionaries' linguistic demands. If these demands were met, Kasravi said, and similar claims "advanced by the other linguistic minorities—especially Armenians, Assyrians, Arabs, Gilanis, and Mazandaranis—nothing will be left

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of Iran." 122 The danger that foreign powers would profit from Iran's internal divisions alarmed the nationalists. After the Sadr government fell in October 1945, Hakimi formed his second government; he refused to negotiate with the "anarchists" in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, concentrating all his efforts on resolving the issue in the international arena. He attempted to conciliate the Soviets by forming a cabinet that, though largely procourt, had three pro-Soviet and no pro-British members. He sent the former premier Bayat, known for his friendly stance toward the Soviets, to Azerbaijan as governor-general. After Iranian troops were halted by Soviet forces in November, Hakimi offered to travel to Moscow personally to help resolve the situation. Simultaneously, he enlisted both U.S. and British representatives to send missives to the Soviets urging the immediate evacuation of their troops. 123 This flurry of diplomatic activity did not persuade the Soviets that they could negotiate with Hakimi; his pro-British background, his association with the court, his continued repression of the Tudeh, and his lack of relations with Azerbaijan combined to convince the Soviets that his Western ties threatened their position. When Hakimi offered to go to Moscow to resolve the Irano-Soviet tensions, the Soviets publicly announced that they would not negotiate with him; the only person with whom they would negotiate was Qavam. 124 The British, meanwhile, were little more impressed. They viewed Hakimi's conciliation of the Soviet Union as threatening to their position throughout Iran. The British ambassador Bullard argued that "over-centralization was the real cause of present disintegration" and revived the old policy of advocating autonomous regions in the south under British tutelage. This was compatible with Soviet control over the northern provinces; the Soviets' refusal to discuss withdrawal from Iran at Yalta and Potsdam made the British believe they would remain. 125 Ernest Bevin, the British foreign minister, sought—on Bullard's advice—to institutionalize a de facto division of Iran through a proposed Tripartite Commission, by which Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union would install provincial governments in their respective assigned areas. 1 2 6 That Britain's power was waning led British statesmen to make an active effort to involve the United States in Iran in order to protect their own interests. The changing balance of power had made both countries more in favor of this concept. They jointly proposed the Tripartite Commission at the Moscow Conference of foreign ministers in December 1945. The commission, which called for Great Power supervision of Iran's provincial affairs, would have degraded Iranian provinces to the status of protectorates. Mossadegh was fully alive to the possibilities; as he told the Fourteenth Majlis: "The day that the three Great Powers unite their policies, Iran is finished as an independent state." 1 2 7 Molotov declined to take part in the commission, objecting that

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Iranian representatives were not present at the conference. A strong, unified, independent Iran remained a goal of Soviet foreign policymakers. Like his predecessor Chicherin, Molotov was primarily concerned with reducing Western influence in Iran. While ideology helped form this policy, strategy—which entailed preserving Iran as a neutral buffer between the Soviet Union and the West—was very important. Also, by asking for Iran's representation and refusing to consider the Tripartite Commission, the Soviets gained popularity in Iran. Had they opted to participate, it would have given them complete diplomatic justification for pulling all of northern Iran, not just Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, into their sphere of influence. Yet, the Soviets rejected this option, much as Lenin had rejected Britain's proposal in the early 1920s to renegotiate the 1907 treaty. From the Soviets' refusal to join the commission, it was clear that they did not want to dismember Iran. Their objective in supporting the Azerbaijani and Kurdish revolutions, then, must have been to reorient the policy of the government in Tehran. The Soviets felt that the Iranian government was increasingly hostile. Molotov and Stalin were working to obtain equilibrium with the West in an independent Iran. 128 Soviet policy elsewhere in the northern tier, which included avoiding the "resurrection of the 'cordon sanitaire' policy" exemplified by the Sa'ad Abad Pact, confirmed the USSR's postwar preoccupation with security. 129 While Molotov, in particular, was cautious about taking actions that would result in the division of Iran, the government of Soviet Azerbaijan was, from the beginning, more outspoken. Baghirov saw support for the revolutions in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan as more than a means of obtaining equilibrium. An Azeri himself, Baghirov wanted both revolutions to succeed in establishing autonomous republics; his main concern, however, was Azerbaijan. Baghirov's attempts to subordinate the revolution in Mahabad to that in Tabriz contributed to the existing racial and political tensions between the two revolutionary movements. 130 Although Soviet policy in this period was not as noticeably disunified as it had been during the Gilan episode, the difference in viewpoints between Molotov and Baghirov was nonetheless significant. Stalin eventually took sides with his Foreign Ministry, but it is worth noting that he never considered Baghirov's enthusiasm for revolution in Azerbaijan inordinate. Hakimi forwarded the goals of the Tripartite Commission by announcing, on December 20, elections for provincial councils. In January, when the BBC announced the impending formation of the commission, panic descended on Tehran. Mossadegh expressed gratitude to the Soviets for refusing to participate, but he also voiced fears that Soviet policy might change if the Tehran government did not negotiate directly with the government of the USSR. Hakimi's plan to go to the UN and charge the Soviets with interference, Mossadegh warned, would only further alienate them: "If we do not negotiate directly with our northern neighbor, we are finished. For if the tripartite

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commission meets, Iran will be carved up as in 1907. We have no choice but to replace Hakimi with a premier who will be welcome in Moscow." 131 He asked Hakimi to resign so that Iran's neutrality would not be suspect. 132 In late January, Qavam—to whom Mossadegh clearly referred—was indeed elected to replace Hakimi and immediately announced his intention to negotiate with the USSR. The plan to charge the Soviets with interference was put on hold. On February 18, Qavam set off for the Soviet capital, where he met with Stalin twice and Molotov four times. Molotov suggested that Iran recognize the autonomous governments in the northern provinces; Stalin recommended that Qavam initiate "deep social reforms" in Iran to further its historical evolution 133 and promoted a bourgeois-reformist government that would advance Iran's social evolution at the same time as it limited Western influence. Stalin also suggested that Iran constitute an Irano-Soviet petroleum company, with the Iranians receiving 49-percent interest and, after the fifty-year term of the company had expired, full ownership. In comparison to the minimal payment Iran received from the AIOC, these terms were generous. Molotov told Qavam that Russia would evacuate certain regions, beginning in March, but that this was conditional on the end of the Iranian government's "hostile" and "discriminatory" attitude toward the Soviet government. 134 The Soviet Union, seeking to rebuild its economy in the aftermath of World War II, was especially concerned for the security of the Baku oilfields. While no specific agreements were reached in Moscow, relations between Iran and the Soviet Union became noticeably more cordial. Qavam's repeated assurances that he wished to restore equilibrium to Iranian foreign policy greatly relaxed the tensions between the two governments: "My policy is to maintain equilibrium among Russia, Great Britain, and the United States," he stated. 135 The Soviets, in turn, replaced their hard-line ambassador, Mikhail A. Maximov, with a more conciliatory diplomat, Ivan Sadchikov. Negotiations on oil and troop withdrawal continued. Qavam reiterated his willingness to consider an oil concession. The U.S. ambassador, Murray, summarized Qavam's position: H e c o n s i d e r s that from [the] v i e w p o i n t o f practical p o l i t i c s [an] understanding with [the] U S S R on northern Iranian oil is long overdue. H e asserted that S o v i e t complaints that Iran had discriminated in favor of Britain by granting [the] A.I.O.C. [a] c o n c e s s i o n were hard to meet. . . . H e believes . . . that such [a] c o n c e s s i o n is i n e v i t a b l e . 1 3 6

However, Qavam reminded the Soviets that the Majlis, whose term had now expired, had to approve any oil concession, and that the previous Majlis had passed a law stipulating that no elections could be held while foreign troops were in the country. The presence of Soviet troops, then, hindered the conclusion of an oil agreement. On April 4, the Soviet Union and Iran concluded negotiations that promised

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the Red Army would withdraw within six weeks of March 24, 1946; that a joint Irano-Soviet oil company would be established; and that the Azerbaijan revolution would be treated as an internal Iranian affair. The crisis atmosphere gradually diminished. Troop withdrawal began in March in northeastern areas, and by May 9 the Red Army had withdrawn from all of Iran. Qavam's skill in promoting the Soviets' withdrawal was so evident that the shah, never his ally, was obliged to confer on him the title Jenab-i Ashraf—His Noble Excellency. 137 In the meantime, Qavam undertook a variety of internal measures designed to further reassure the Soviet Union. On his return, he announced his intention to reform Iran internally while establishing equilibrium in foreign policy. He arrested several pro-British politicians, including Seyyed Zia, Jamal Imami, and Ali Dashti; closed down ten rightist newspapers; arrested the staunchly antiSoviet former chief of staff, General Arfa, for arming the Shahsavan tribe against the Tabriz government; and allowed the Tudeh complete freedom in demonstrations and publications. On April 7, he promised the CCFTU that the trade union would participate in government discussion of labor matters, and that he would reduce the work week to forty-eight hours, with Friday as a paid holiday. 138 Also in this period, Qavam initiated negotiations with the Democratic government in Tabriz. In June, he reached a tentative agreement with the ADP, by which the central government recognized the National Government of Azerbaijan as its provincial council, and the National Assembly that had been elected in Tabriz as the Provincial Assembly. Appointed officials were to be recommended by the provincial councils and approved by the central government. The armed revolutionary volunteers were recognized as local security forces. A variety of other concessions were also promised: Two-thirds of the revenues of Azerbaijan were to be spent in that province for internal improvements; Azerbaijan's representation in the Fifteenth Majlis was to be increased to correspond with its share of Iran's population; instruction in primary schools was to be in the students' native languages, including Kurdish, Assyrian, and Armenian, as well as Azeri. The confiscation of state lands was recognized, but a commission was to be set up to hear the grievances of private landlords whose land had been redistributed. Clearly, this would result in the landlords being, at the least, compensated for their losses. 139 A Kurdish delegation also met with Qavam; however, he informed them that Kurdistan was part of Azerbaijan, and that they therefore ought to negotiate with the Azeris. He raised no objections to their proposal to form their own province within Iran but told them they would first have to obtain the approval of the Tabriz government. Qavam deliberately aggravated the tensions between the two revolutionary governments. 140 The shah opposed these concessions. As commander-in-chief, he particularly objected to giving Iranian army ranks to the Azerbaijan

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revolutionaries. The young shah feared that Qavam would use the Azerbaijan crisis to create a republic. His insistence on exercising his authority as commander-in-chief resulted in a power struggle between shah and prime minister. 1 4 1 To strengthen his position vis-à-vis the shah and simultaneously to reduce the Tudeh's appeal, Qavam formed his own political party on June 29, 1946. Qavam's party, the Hizbeh Dimukrat-i Iran—the Democratic Party of Iran— advocated extensive economic, social, and administrative reforms, which in many cases consciously imitated the programs of the ADP and the Tudeh: It proposed "a drastic revision of the country's security forces," including a reduction of the size of the army, and called for strict demarcation between legislative, judicial, and executive branches of government, to be strictly enforced. These measures were clearly directed against the shah. Female suffrage and provincial anjomans were to be established; health and education were to be promoted, especially in rural areas. Measures appealing to the peasantry were emphasized in an attempt to capitalize on the Tudeh's failure in the countryside. Muzaffar Firuz, now a leading member of Qavam's government and party, said that "the Democratic party will leave the working class to the Tudeh so long as the Tudeh leaves the peasantry to the Democratic party." 1 4 2 In foreign policy, the party advocated equality among the "Big Three." Although the platform was popular, Qavam attempted to unite so many disparate elements that observers early despaired of the party's success. Alongside princes and feudal khans, there were progressive intellectuals. Besides Firuz—erstwhile associate of Seyyed Zia—the party included the Qajar prince M o h a m m a d Vali Farmanfarma; the Zulfaghari brothers—feudal landlords in Zanjan who had fought the ADP; Amini and his older brother Abul Qassem; Bahar—a member of the old Democratic party; Mahmoud Mahmoud—a veteran of Khiabani's party; and Hassan Arsanjani—a progressive young lawyer who later b e c a m e the architect of the 1963 land reform u n d e r Ali Amini's government. This alliance was clearly unworkable. British observer A. C. Edwards wrote not long after the party's formation: It began to look as if Qavam had tried to include too many incompatible e l e m e n t s in his team. H e felt, perhaps, that he could not afford to discard his supporters of the Old Guard, w h o , next to Tudeh, constitute the most p o w e r f u l e l e m e n t in the country. But by retaining them, he antagonized the liberal intellectuals, to w h o m the personality of Prince [Muzaffar] Firuz is particularly distasteful. T h e y w o u l d have nothing to do with a party that included him, and others like him, a m o n g its l e a d e r s . 1 4 3

Qavam continued to initiate progressive reforms, setting up a Supreme Economic Council to draft plans to help peasants, establish a minimum wage, implement a five-year program, protect national industries, and end opium cultivation. T h e s e m o v e s , too, were undoubtedly prompted by similar

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legislation that the ADP had enacted in Azerbaijan. (It should also be noted that Qavam instructed the council to draft plans for the redistribution of crown lands—clearly a move to curb the shah's economic power. 144 ) In July, Qavam contributed to the Tudeh's impression that his government was prolabor and reformist in nature by imposing a settlement on the AIOC in Abadan. The settlement, a response to a strike by a CCFTU affiliate in the Khuzistan oilfields for better standards of living, was reached by a negotiating team led by Prince Muzaffar Firuz. The Tudeh took active part in the negotiations and regarded the settlement, which provided for Fridays off with pay and a minimum wage, as a substantial triumph. Although British representatives agreed that these concessions were not unreasonable, they were nonetheless alarmed by the Tudeh's evident power. 145 In August, without consulting the shah, Qavam decided to eliminate the Tudeh's status as an opposition party. He named three Tudeh members to the cabinet: Keshavarz, minister of education; Morteza Yazdi, minister of health; and Iraj Iskandari, minister of commerce and industry. Allahyar Saleh, a young judge from the Iran Party, which, along with the Socialist and left Jangal parties, had formed a united front with the Tudeh, was made minister of justice. Muzaffar Firuz was promoted to deputy premier. 146 Amini explained this move was done: first, in order to bring the Tudeh into the government and eliminate its opposition status; second, as part of a continuous series of conciliatory gestures to the Soviet Union; third, [because] Qavam believed these people, particularly Dr. Keshavarz, were "admirable" and honest individuals, w h o s e devotion and administrative abilities were badly needed. 1 4 7

Thus Qavam tied the Tudeh to his own government and enlisted the party in the coming struggle against the shah. Further, bringing the Tudeh into the government effectively prevented it from siding with the ADP in the continuing disputes between Tabriz and Tehran. 148 The Tudeh's motives for entering the government are reminiscent of the PCP's motives for supporting Reza Khan in 1921. Qavam's internal reforms, his conflict with the court, and his equilateral foreign policy (with its active anti-British component) convinced the Tudeh that a coalition would accelerate the progression of the bourgeois stage of development while it reduced imperialist (especially British) power in Iran. Participation in the government, the Tudeh decided, would enhance the party's position, protecting it from repression and permitting it to initiate reforms in the ministries. Explained the Tudeh organ Rahbar: "The reason we have joined the government was to cooperate with the nationalist and democratic elements in the government so that we could implement true reforms, and . . . use the government to serve society." 1 4 9 An anti-imperialist united front was clearly the party's goal. By

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

autumn 1946, the united front affiliated with the Tudeh had expanded even to include the ADP and the KDP. 150 Some U.S. policymakers expressed concern that Qavam's alignment with the Tudeh was a step toward Soviet domination of all Iran. For strategic, economic, and political reasons, the United States sought to avoid this possible outcome. It similarly objected to the possibility of Britain and the Soviet Union dividing Iran. In mid-September, the specter of the division of Iran appeared with new vigor. The Qashqais in Fars and Khuzistan revolted and captured Bushehr and Kazerun, massacring the garrison and also some civilians. The tribesmen called their movement the Nehzateh Junoub—the Southern Movement. This group demanded the formation of provincial and local councils in Fars, some social refoims, and an increase in parliamentary representation analogous to that already obtained by Azerbaijan. The Qashqais also demanded that the Tudeh members be expelled from the cabinet: "The people of Fars are saying that there should not be discrimination within one country in favor of a single part of the country." 1 5 1 This was definitely a reference to Qavam's agreements with Azerbaijan. The British certainly helped sponsor the Qashqai revolt. The British ambassador continued to view British tutelage over southern Iran as the optimum outcome of the Azerbaijan crisis. Britain had continued advocating "special consideration" of the interests of southern Iranian provinces. In August, the BBC discussed Arab autonomy for Khuzistan, and the possibility of Khuzistan becoming part of Iraq. Around the same time, the BBC announced the formation of Ettehadiyeh Kermanshah va Ilate Gharb, or Confederation of Kermanshah and Western Tribes, under the pro-British feudal landlord Gobadian. Like the Southern Movement, this group demanded concessions from the central government similar to those Azerbaijan had received. 152 There is some historical debate over Qavam's role in the revolt of the southern tribes; certainly he publicly abhorred it. Many Iranian statesmen, however, including Amini and Shahpour Bakhtiar, have informed the author that Qavam helped initiate the revolt, fearing that the Soviets' continued support (now political, not military) of the Azerbaijani Democrats would lead to a de facto division of Iran. The revolt of the Qashqais gave Qavam leverage: Surely the Soviets would be anxious enough to avoid Western hegemony over the south that they would forgo any advantages they might gain by supporting the revolutionary governments in the north. 153 Qavam also used the threat of Iran's division, which seemed imminent during the Qashqai revolt, as leverage to get U.S. support against the revolutions in the north. On September 29, he told Ambassador Allen that conciliating Azerbaijan "had not yielded favorable results, and had merely encouraged other sections of [the] country to make impossible demands." Qavam asked Allen for more concrete assurances of U.S. aid, to be used in a "sharp change of policy, based on strong insistence upon Iranian sovereignty throughout the country." 154

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153

The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, who still played a great role in formulating policy in the immediate aftermath of World War II, strongly suggested that Qavam's request for military assistance be heeded. Iran's strategic, economic, and political importance, they reiterated, was great. Strategically and economically, Iran was crucial because of its geographical position as a gateway to the oil-rich Middle East, and because of its own vast oil resources: "In order to . . . prevent . . . a Soviet attack overrunning the whole Middle East including the Suez-Cairo Area, in the first rush, it is essential that there be maintained the maximum cushion . . . in the path of possible Soviet advances." 155 Clearly, U.S. oil interests in the Middle East, especially Saudi Arabia, were a major concern, as was keeping the oil reserves out of Soviet hands. 156 A division of Iran between Soviet and British spheres of influence, the Joint Chiefs asserted, would be a strategic disaster of major proportions. 157 The United States' emerging northern tier policy called for strong, unified states in the region, which would serve as buffers between East and West. It is striking that the Soviets, as noted, had a similar policy regarding Iran and Afghanistan. However, U.S. and Soviet statesmen seemed unaware of the commonality of their interests. Each perceived the other as an aggressor that was attempting to divide or establish political hegemony over Iran. U.S. policy was dictated by the emergence of the cold war in the Middle East, as was Soviet policy. Idealistic motives, including the enforcement of the Atlantic Charter, were waning in the face of these overriding realpolitik considerations. 158 U.S. foreign policy, however, continued to employ idealistic tactics to achieve its goals. There were, the Joint Chiefs noted, political reasons for supporting Iran. The notion of the United States as a willing ally had to be reinforced: "[T]oken assistance by the United States to the Iranian military establishment would probably contribute to the defense of United States strategic interest in the Near and Middle East by creating a feeling of good will toward the United States in the . . . government of Iran." 159 This interaction of realistic goals and idealistic tactics was also evident in the United States' economic relations with Iran, which were devoted to the pursuit of the "open door." 160 In March, Qavam had suggested to Ambassador Murray that the United States would obtain oil concessions in Baluchistan (southeastern Iran) to correspond to the proposed concession to the Soviets in the north. This was part of Qavam's ongoing attempts to strengthen U.S.-Iranian relations and diminish Britain's influence. Murray expressed some enthusiasm, but Secretary of State James Byrnes cautioned him that the U.S. image as an idealistic, disinterested power, had to be preserved if the United States' realistic goals were to be obtained. 161 As a result of Qavam's request for aid (endorsed by Allen) and the advice of the Joint Chiefs, the United States—which for a long time had offered only vague references to the Atlantic Charter—at last agreed to supply Iran with substantial military aid. On October 18, 1946, the secretary of state authorized

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

furnishing "reasonable quantities" of "arms and munitions," as well as strengthening U.S. military missions in Iran. 1 6 2 This support was crucial to the Iranian government's military action against the revolutionary northern regimes. Thus, the United States played a similar role to that the British had played in the demise of the Gilan revolution. Like Britain in 1921, the United States sought in 1946 to achieve internal stability in Iran to secure its own economic and strategic interests; this was a prelude to the Truman Doctrine of March 1947. Truman offered Greece and Turkey similar substantial military and economic assistance. Because of Britain's decline as a regional power, U.S. policymakers came to the conclusion that active U.S. involvement was essential to preserve the balance of power between East and West. 1 6 3 The United Slates tried, as Britain had between the wars, to strengthen the indigenous governments in the northern tier as barriers to perceived Soviet expansionism. The Truman Doctrine was the formal beginning of active U.S. involvement in the Middle East. The United States was anxious to preserve an independent government in Iran. For a brief period, it seemed as though Qavam's Democratic Party could perform this function. However, the factions within the Democratic Party, and Q a v a m ' s evident desire to conciliate the Soviets, soon convinced U.S. representatives that support for the court, often at loggerheads with the prime minister, was needed to strengthen Iran's central government. As the British observer Edwards noted, support for Iran's independent liberals, including Qavam, was a risky proposition: "The liberal intellectuals are certainly among the best elements in Persia. But they are not organized. They have no party of their own. There is nothing there to bite on." 1 6 4 The shah, however, was a tangible power at the moment; as early as September 1944, Ambassador Lcland Morris had noted that it might be possible that the strengthening of his hand would be one of the roads out of the internal political dilemma in which this countryfinds itself. One thing is certain, that the weakness at the top which is apparent here must be eliminated either through the hands of the shah or by the rise of a strong individual. 1 6 5

The United States sought a strong central figure, just as Britain had in the early 1920s. T h e second Pahlavi monarch's obvious dissatisfaction with Qavam's temporary alliance with the Tudeh gave him goals in common with the those of the United States. In October, Qavam acceded to Tudeh pressure to call for elections in the near future, despite the fact that the continued existence of the autonomous governments in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan in the north, and the agitation of the southern tribes, would have made these elections what U.S. officials termed a "farce." 1 6 6 The shah, assured that the United States would support his position, demanded that Qavam break with the Tudeh. Qavam agreed and reformed his cabinet without either the Tudeh, the Iran Party, or Prince M u z a f f a r Firuz, on

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155

October 19. Firuz was sent to Moscow as ambassador; martial law was declared in Tehran and Tudeh activities were suppressed. The shah noted that the premier seemed relieved to be rid of the Tudeh. 167 Qavam, by this time assured that U.S. aid was in the offing, proceeded to plan for the subjugation of the northern revolutions. The Soviets' political support of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan had continued, but, in the light of the increasing U.S. commitment to the central government, Qavam felt secure in moving Iranian troops north anyway. 168 General Ali Razmara—a relative by marriage of Prince Muzaffar Firuz, who had been impressed by Khosrow Ruzbeh while commanding the Military College and who had gained the post of chief-of-staff after distinguishing himself on the Kurdish front in the early months of the uprising—oversaw the military operation. An ardent personal enemy of the procourt Arfa, Razmara had strong connections to the Tudeh military network, though these connections seemed to have been more a matter of power politics than of ideology; 1 6 9 Razmara used the network to gain political power much as Reza Khan had increased his strength through the suppression of the Gilan revolution. Even during the campaign, the young shah had become alarmed at Razmara's increasing power, 170 though his strength was particularly important in light of the fact that the shah would require full support from the armed forces to reassert his control over the government. The young Pahlavi monarch relied on Razmara's power in April 1947, when the court established control over the Democratic Party's affiliated union and arrested the CCFTU leader Reza Rusta. 171 With the central government's authority over the northern provinces on its way to being established, elections for the Fifteenth Majlis were held; in June 1946, the new parliament finally convened (see Table 7.2). The Tudeh had boycotted the elections, and Qavam's fragile Democratic Party held a majority. Qavam, the court, and Razmara had competed to rig the elections of their own favorites, but the politicians they chose were all men of weak character and could be expected to be submissive to whoever controlled the greatest force. Not surprisingly, the Democrats resolved to vote not as a bloc but according to their individual consciences; conservative Democrats defected to vote with the procourt faction. When Qavam finally submitted the SovietIranian oil proposal in October, most Democrats voted against it. Qavam himself seemed rather lukewarm on the subject now that the Irano-Soviet tension had diminished; he now advocated a more "negative" form of equilibrium that would limit British as well as Soviet influence in Iran and expand U.S. involvement strictly in economic and political affairs. Negotiations with U.S. consulting firms to aid Iran were part of the Seven Year Plan for economic development announced by Qavam on October 25, 1946. An agreement that the Iranian army would retain U.S. military advisors was signed, specifying that the

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Table 7.2.

Composition of the Fifteenth Majlis

Large landowners Industrialists Major merchants Former ministers and high government officials Lawyers, journalists, other intelligentsia Total

No.

%

62 10 10 22 28 132

46 8 8 17 21 100

Source: Kambaksh, [Survey of the Labor and Communist Movement], vol. 2, p. 22, citing newspaper Razm 3 (1948).

Iranian government would have to obtain the permission of the United States before retaining military advisors of other nationalities. 172 Once the oil concession was resoundingly rejected by the Majlis, the court felt safe in removing Qavam from power. He had lost any international support—from the Soviet Union or United States—that he ever had. He had given up the support of the left when he had turned against the Tudeh in October 1946 and had launched the offensive on Azerbaijan and Kurdistan in December. His own political party was rapidly disintegrating, and the court and Razmara had been strengthened: On December 12, 1946, the revolutionary governments of Tabriz and Mahabad, plagued by internal dissensions, had collapsed in the face of the central government's superior U.S.-supplied firepower. When the court demanded Qavam's resignation in December 1947, it was, thanks to Razmara's pressure on the deputies, impossible for Qavam to obtain a vote of confidence. 173 Anglo-U.S.-Soviet rivalry in Iran continued. The Soviets feared that the U.S. military advisors retained by Qavam effectively joined Iran to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. In this context, the Soviets hoped that the chiefof-staff, Razmara, could prevent Iran from becoming a party to this and other anti-Soviet pacts. Like Reza Khan, Razmara appealed to all three major powers; all welcomed him in the belief that he would preserve Iran as an independent buffer state, thereby limiting the ability of the other powers to establish their hegemony over the region. 174 Razmara used the Tudeh's tacit support to obtain the premiership in 1950. Some Tudeh leaders, most notably in the party military network, hoped that support for Razmara would facilitate the fight against the court. Razmara, they felt, was a bourgeois democrat and a centralist who would advance Iran's social transformation. The parallel between the PCP's support of Reza Khan against the Qajars is striking. 175 The emergence of the cold war in the international arena and the polarization of international relations placed Iran's internal political situation in the broader context of global affairs, preventing the revolutionary movements in the north from being treated as indigenous phenomena. A similar course of events had

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taken place in 1921, but the extent of global rivalry was much greater in the later period. The realistic British foreign policy attempted to secure British interests, much as in 1921. However, Britain's greatly reduced strength in the late 1940s limited its options: It had either to rely on U.S. military power to protect its interests against the Soviets or divide Iran with the Soviets, or both. No longer was a unified Iran under British tutelage a viable option. The United States played a much greater role in the resolution of the 1946 crises than it had in the Gilan episode. Perhaps because the United States had become the greatest Western power, U.S. goals in the Middle East were becoming increasingly those of political "realists." The defense of U.S. oil interests in Saudi Arabia had become a major concern, as had denying Iranian oil to the Soviets. To achieve these goals, the United States supported a strong central government in Tehran to preserve a buffer zone between the Soviet Union and the Persian Gulf. This policy was extended by the Truman Doctrine to cover the entire northern tier. Economic factors seem to have been only a part of broader military strategic interests. As the cold war evolved, the control of energy resources, in particular, became a major part of U.S. foreign policy. The Soviet Union's foreign policy was similiar to what it had been in 1921. The Soviets supported the revolutions in northern Iran as a means of forcing the central government to reorient its pro-Western policy in the direction of greater equilibrium. As in 1921, Soviet troops withdrew after this goal had seemingly been achieved. The dissipation of revolutionary potential in Azerbaijan, particularly the alienation of the peasantry, contributed to the Soviets' decision to withdraw their active support. 176 (This factor will be discussed more fully in the following chapter.) The cold war between the Soviet Union and the West certainly accelerated as a result of the crises in northern Iran, which did not induce either side to trust the intentions of the other. In his March 5, 1946, "Iron Curtain" speech in Fulton, Missouri, former Prime Minister Churchill said, "Turkey and Persia are both profoundly alarmed and disturbed at the claims which are being made upon them and at the pressure being exerted by the Moscow Government." 1 7 7 Clearly, the West had begun to perceive the Soviet Union as expansionist. The Soviets, for their part, considered that the West was engineering a hostile encirclement, 178 and U.S. involvement in the resolution of the Azerbaijan affair only increased their fears. In a famous speech in September 1947, Stalin's close associate Andrei Zhdanov called for the vigorous strengthening of the socialist camp as a fortress against this perceived Western hostility. 179 The security of Baku and the Caucasus was vital to the rebuilding of the Soviet internal economic structure, which, in 1946, reflected, not the idea of peaceful coexistence, but the idea of preparing for a possible war. Iran's government, as in the aftermath of World War I, moved from a primarily pro-British posture to an advocacy of equilibrium between East and West, partly under the pressure of events in northern Iran. Like his earlier counterpart, Mushir al-Dowleh, Bayat tried to establish equilibrium and failed.

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He was succeeded by the pro-British Sadr, who alienated the Soviets much as Mushir al-Dowleh's successors, Sepahdar and Seyyed Zia, had. Hakimi, like Seyyed Zia in 1921, made friendly overtures to the Soviet Union; but, again like his counterpart, his prior reputation as pro-British aroused Soviet suspicions. Qavam came to power in both periods and succeeded in obtaining Soviet withdrawal through a skillful series of conciliatory gestures that gave the Soviets the equilibrium they sought, at least for the time being. As Iranian nationalists turned to the policy of negative equilibrium to avoid what they perceived as the attempts of West and East to divide Iran, it emerged as a possible solution to Great Power rivalry. This concept was a much more potent force as expressed by Mossadegh than it had been when Mudarres suggested it during the Gilan crisis. It became a unifying ideological factor (possibly the only unifying ideological factor) of Mossadegh's National Front. In either its positive or negative conception, equilibrium has retained a powerful influence on various groups and governments in Iranian politics up to this date. Thus, in 1946 as in 1921, the foreign policies of Britain, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Iran interacted to change the course of the revolutions in northern Iran. The tactics of the Iranian premier Qavam were remarkably similar in both cases; the basic economic, strategic, and ideological interests of the foreign powers remained similar. This explains why all interested Great Powers eventually came to support Razmara as they had Reza Khan, each party believing that a strong, independent military leader in Iran would serve its own interests. However, the relative strengths of the powers had changed by the late 1940s. Britain was much weaker, the United States had emerged as a major player, and the Soviet Union, though economically devastated by the recent war, was nonetheless negotiating from a position of great military strength. In this new correlation of forces in the international scene, Iranian affairs became tied, not to a period of "peaceful coexistence," as in the early 1920s, but to a period of cold war between the emergent superpowers. In combination with internal problems within these revolutions, these foreign policy components made it possible for the Iranian government to destroy the revolutionary governments.

8 The Autonomous Provincial Governments: Development and Collapse

The Democrats did a hundred times more for Azerbaijan than Reza Shah Idid in his twenty-year reign]. — A z e r b a i j a n i merchant, to the author The Kurds would rather be ruled by Tehran than be dominated by Tabriz. — H a j B a b a Shaikh, premier of the Kurdish Republic (1946)

While events in the international arena played a decisive role in the emergence and outcome of the revolutions in northern Iran, the collapse of both governments in December 1946, with only the barest minimum of resistance, cannot be explained solely by reference to global affairs. Developments within Azerbaijan and Kurdistan contributed to the collapse of autonomy. Period of Moderate Reform In the winter of 1945-1946, the autonomous governments of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan were officially formed. Both initially encompassed individuals with widely disparate views and goals, and, initially, both advocated only moderate reforms. In November 1946, the National Congress of Azerbaijan, having failed to obtain concessions from the central government, called for the convention of a national Azerbaijani majlis. Speaking to the congress, Pishevari promised a moderate program: "After having obtained our autonomy, we shall devote ourselves to the prosperity of Azerbaijan. We shall rebuild the towns and villages that have been destroyed and build ourselves some schools." To ensure popular support, Pishevari added, "We shall take the advice of our nation into consideration and suppress from our programs all that which our nation rejects."1 On December 12, after an election that, for the first time in Iran's history, pennitted universal male and female suffrage, an Azerbaijani majlis convened in Tabriz and elected a cabinet of ten ministers. This cabinet, in which Pishevari, 159

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

himself a mohajer, was premier and minister of labor, encompassed radical as well as more moderate elements. Biriya, the mohajer minister of education, was the only cabinet member who had belonged to the Tudeh. Javid, a moderate mohajer, was minister of interior; Kaviyan, a more radical mohajer, was minister of the People's Army. The other six posts, in the more minor ministries of justice, finance, trade and economy, agriculture, health, and post and telegraph, were given to natives of Iranian Azerbaijan. 2 Dancshyan, a radical mohajer, was made vice-minister of the People's Army and given control of the militia, or fedayis.3 The militia itself, the ADP's fighting arm, was led by mohajers and composed predominantly of peasants who had been organized by the Tudeh before the ADP had dissolved that party's provincial branch. 4 Under Daneshyan's active leadership, political officers were assigned to fedayi units (and later to the national army) to give the soldiers political education. 5 In this early period, the ADP stressed the solidarity of all classes in the struggle for national rights. The government's program called for local and provincial assemblies, a national budget, and a national army formed from the militias. It mandated free and compulsory education—in Turkic, which was proclaimed the official state language—and the establishment of a university. A fifteen-person commission, including two women and an Armenian, was selected to write a constitution (never completed). The government was to confiscate and redistribute state-owned land and that of landlords who had left Azerbaijan; an agricultural bank was to be established to give the peasants credit with which to buy confiscated land. The government undertook to leave private property inviolate and to encourage private initiative, "which would promote the economic progress of our nation." It was to promulgate labor laws, fight unemployment, emphasize public health, and it was to respect the rights of other "nationalities" living in Azerbaijan: "Kurds, Armenians, Assyrians, etc." The pronouncement on autonomy from Tehran was as follows: "The National Government of Azerbaijan recognizes the central government and will implement its decisions, as long as they do not infringe upon our right to autonomy." 6 This program was designed to attract all social classes and give the revolution as broad a social base as possible. Explained the newspaper Azerbaijan: The Tudeh therefore it to join the and accept

party of Iran, its programs and goals, were class-oriented, and was identified with leftist tendencies. Those people who want Democratic Party [of Azerbaijan] should moderate their views the Democratic Party's goals and mottos. 7

These "goals and mottos" were related primarily to Azerbaijan's national identity. Pishevari wrote that the province's autonomy was inevitable: "They say in Tehran newspapers that if they had paid attention to our problems, this

THE AUTONOMOUS PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS

161

movement would not have taken place. But the truth is different. . . . Azerbaijan has its own language, customs, history, and national identity." 8 The new regime's administrative reforms included creating a provincial bureaucracy with a thorough change in personnel from the old Persian officialdom. Pishevari admitted that finding qualified Azeri administrators was difficult; 9 but, according to the British consul, the government's attempts to remedy the administrative problem succeeded: In general, the Democrat officials, while obviously lacking the graces of some of the old Persian officials, strike me as men of much shrewdness and practical experience. They are interested in their own local affairs and are, I have no doubt, far more capable municipal administrators than the officials formerly sent by Tehran. 1 0

A law making it a capital offense to take a bribe fought corruption and, through strict enforcement, brought an unprecedented degree of law and order to Azerbaijan. 11 The government's initial social reforms were extensive and tremendously popular, from founding the University of Tabriz—the first university built outside Tehran—and giving government scholarships to poor students to planning an extensive network of high schools and elementary schools—one school per village. It actually built eighty-two high schools and 325 elementary schools. Adult education programs were established to fight illiteracy in villages and cities alike. Health care, which Pishevari had complained about in the Fourteenth Majlis, was greatly improved: The Azerbaijani Democrats built a modern hospital, created itinerant health clinics, and emphasized sanitation; established a clean supply of water and installed indoor plumbing throughout Tabriz; attacked prostitution and opium addiction through both prohibitions and rehabilitation efforts. A radio station and a public transportation system were established in Tabriz, and government-sponsored plays and musicals promoted Azeri culture; Azeri literature blossomed. 12 The government's economic reforms touched all classes, covering labor, agriculture, and commerce. The labor law, approved by the Azerbaijan Majlis in May 1946, promised a minimum wage, a 48-hour, 6-day work week, with time and a half for overtime, paid holidays, and literacy classes for workers who could neither read nor write. The Azeri government introduced collective bargaining between employees and employers and fought unemployment through an extensive public works program, which included paving many streets in Tabriz with asphalt. 13 Among peasants, landless migrant laborers were especially targeted as beneficiaries of land reform. Land was distributed on the basis of need; large families received the greatest amount. A number of other innovations also served peasants. The Azerbaijani government increased their share of the harvest and formed peasant-elected village councils to oversee land reform, moderate

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

landlord-peasant disputes, and help those with financial problems. The government put village storage facilities and water, traditionally controlled by the landlords, at the disposal of the villagers. The ADP took over peasant councils formed by the Tudeh and used them as centers of political education, through which the government could gain support. These progressive programs brought peasant support for the revolutionary regime to its height.' 4 The government assumed a great role in the commercial life of the province, nationalizing the larger banks and using the funds for a variety of economic programs, including the agricultural bank. In response, the central government put Azerbaijan under an economic boycott, but the province's economy continued to function independently. The revolutionary government, anxious to reestablish orderly economic relations, printed its own currency. It confiscated the factories of owners who had left or had resisted the progressive labor laws, reopening them in an effort to create a flourishing environment for business. Prices of basic commodities were rigidly controlled, and hoarding severely punished. A rationing system was adopted. According to U.S. Justice William O. Douglas, who visited the region after the fall of the Tabriz government: "Pishevari promised that the cost of living would be reduced 40 per cent; and it was." 15 The revolutionary government's administrative, social, and economic reforms were, as the U.S. consul conceded, extremely popular. 16 Peasants and workers, as well as merchants, supported both the Tabriz government and the ADP (see Table 8.1). The reasons for peasant and worker support are obvious; merchants and businessmen supported the government because, in this moderate phase, Azerbaijani autonomy was in their interest as well. It removed the constraints by which the central government had hindered trade with the Soviet Union and other parts of Iran, and it established a measure of law and order that had been lacking since the central government's authority had collapsed. 17 Initially, in addition to cooperation across class lines, there was cooperation among the various racial groups in northern Iran. In October 1945, Kurds, Assyrians, and Armenians aided the ADP's seizure of the city of Miandoab. Racially mixed Rezaieh was the scene of the only major confrontation between the fedayis and central government forces. There, in the words of the British consul, "For the first time in Rezaieh's history of racial and religious butchery, Kurds, Azerbaijanis, Muslims, Assyrians, and Armenians fought side by side against a common enemy." 18 The cooperation was unfortunately short-lived. Five Kurdish delegates, including Qazi Mohammad's cousin Saif-i Qazi, went to Azerbaijan's National Majlis in December. As was evident in the Majlis' determination to grant rights to minorities living in Azerbaijan, Kurdistan was considered part of Azerbaijan. The Kurds, however, did not agree; their deputies returned from Tabriz after three sessions, alienated by the Azeris' attempt to dominate Kurdistan, 19 where, in the meantime, an autonomous government was also established.

THE AUTONOMOUS PROVINCIAL GOVERNMENTS

Tabic 8.1.

Estimated Composition of the ADP,

163

December 1945

% Peasants Workers Artisans Merchants Intelligentsia Landowners Clerics Unknown class Total:

56,000 6,000 3,000 2,000 2,000 500 100 5,400 75,000

74.7 8. 4. 2.7 2.7 .7 .1 7.2 100.

Figures are rounded. Source: Ivanov, [Contemporary History of Iran], p. 108; Azerbaijan, January 23, 1946; Reza Radmanesh, "Dar Bareh Nehzat-i 21 Azar [About the 12th of December (1945) Movement]," Donya 6, no. 4 (Winter 1965): 9-18 (figures on p. 16). Pesyan, in [Both Death and Retreat], mentions a similar composition, as does Ibrahimoff, [About the National Democratic Movement of Azerbaijan], p. 45.

On December 17, the Kurdish flag (an inverted Iranian flag) was raised over the Ministry of Justice in Mahabad, the last vestige of Tehran's authority in the area; on January 22, 1946, Qazi announced the formation of an autonomous Kurdish republic. In his speech he stressed the religious, nationalist nature of the new regime. In early February, an autonomous Kurdish government was formed through consultation between Qazi and the central committee of the KDP. The cabinet, like the KDP, was—in sharp contrast to the government and party leaders in Azerbaijan—composed of leaders of the existing social order. Merchants, landowners, tribal leaders, and religious figures dominated both. The petty bourgeois intellectuals who had formed the Komoleh had, by this time, been joined by many conservative, even feudal, leaders who, in Kurdistan's highly patrimonial society, exerted great political influence. 2 0 As the historian Homayounpour states, the cabinet included "a majority of elements drawn from the ruling class. Tribal chiefs played a determining role there." 21 Qazi was president. The prime minister, who proved ineffectual, was Hajji Baba Shaikh, once an ally of Reza Khan; he had joined the KDP only very recently and was apparently appointed to counterbalance the influence of another prominent Kurdish family, the Ilkhanizadeh cousins, Abdul Rahman and Ismail Agha, who received the ministries of foreign affairs and roads, respectively. The Ilkhanizadehs, representing the Dehbokri tribe, were rivals of the Qazis, and their inclusion was politically necessary. The minister of war was Mohammad Hussein Saif-i Qazi; the bazaari Ahmad Ilahi, one of the early Komoleh members to receive cabinet posts, was made minister of economics. Other early Komoleh men received the ministries of education, labor, and justice. 22 The cabinet reflected the fragmented, patrimonial nature of Kurdish society, with its

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family loyalties and rivalries, and illustrated the limited abilities of urban nationalists, such as the early Komoleh members, to attain positions of power in this milieu. In Azerbaijan, mohajers assumed important ministries such as those of interior or the People's Army, and the premiership; local nationalists held lesser posts. In Kurdistan, the "first families" and tribal leaders assumed the posts analogous to those held by mohajers in Azerbaijan, and gave the Komoleh nationalists positions of more limited power. The power of the Ministry of War had to be exercised through consultation with the tribes, which constituted the main fighting force of the new Kurdish republic. The Shakkak and Herki tribes were important in this respect, but a new tribal force in the region, the Barzanis, was even more influential. The Barzanis, under Mulla Mustafa, had recently fled to Iranian Kurdistan after an unsuccessful revolt in Iraq, in which they had been allied with the Hewa Party. The local tribesmen viewed them as alien and radical and became enmeshed in rivalries with them. The Barzanis' presence increased the existing tribal segmentation in Kurdistan, and, in their control of military affairs and perceived radicalism, were analogous to the mohajers in Azerbaijan. From the strength of the conservative elements in the cabinet, it is not surprising that the government's program was conservative. Says Parviz Homayounpour: "The regime retained a practically feudal character. Its economic and political objectives were of a conservative tendency." 23 The Kurdish government never sought social and economic change, calling instead for Kurdish autonomy within the Iranian state: local anjomans to oversee state affairs; selection of local administrators from the Kurdish population; and education in Kurdish. It did, though, guarantee the rights of minorities in Kurdistan—"Persians, Azerbaijanis, Armenians, Assyrians, etc." Religious minorities were included in this tolerance; the government permitted the thirty Jewish families in Mahabad to have their own school and conduct classes in Hebrew. Like the Tabriz government, the Mahabad administration emphasized health, education, and public works. It opened schools, and, under Qazi's personal direction, formed plans for a Kurdish national library in Mahabad. 24 The inclusion of a quill flanked by sheaves of wheat in the centerpiece of the Kurdish flag underlined the vital importance of education and agriculture, both neglected by Reza Shah's government. The main economic reform that the Kurdish Republic initiated was the moderation of relations between landlords and peasants. 25 In its brief existence, it made every effort to implement this relatively progressive nationalist program, increasing the peasants' share of the harvest. To improve the internal economy, it created a company called Sherkateh Taraqieh Kurdistan, the Company of Kurdish Progress. Through performance and print, the new republic attempted to inculcate national pride among Kurds and unity among the tribes. Plays linked the region's culture to Kurdish nationalism, exalting Kurdistan and denigrating the

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central government, especially the shah. The KDP organized women in their own section of the party—headed by Qazi's wife—so that they, too, could play a role in the national struggle. 26 Newspapers were published in Kurdi, including Kurdistan and the women's paper, Halala (The Tulip). Kurdistan, published in multiracial, urbanized Rezaieh, occasionally included even Marxist analysis; Rezaieh, because of its ties to Azerbaijan and Iraq, was the city most prone to radicalism. 27 The paper's political philosophy more often appealed to moderate Kurds, its phraseology reflecting the patrimonial, devoutly Moslem nature of the society. For example, it constantly referred to Qazi as Pishva—the Leader. No one, of any social class, wanted to surrender the ad hoc autonomy the region had enjoyed since the Allied occupation for a return of central government repression. All cherished the liberty to use their own language, wear their own dress, and follow their indigenous customs. The autonomous Kurdish republic promised the Kurds rights to all of these activities while it furthered the class interests of many social groups: It gave the landlords and tribal leaders a voice in their own government, it gave the bazaaris hope that trade with Soviet Russia, which had been renewed since the collapse of Reza Shah's centralized economy, would give them economic independence. In this, the Kurdish merchant class resembled its Azerbaijani counterpart. 28 While the Kurds had a tactical alliance with the Soviets, this did not prevent them from seeking support elsewhere. In May, Qazi tried to persuade the United States to support Kurdish nationalism. The State Department was unreceptive, but Qazi's attempt to court U.S. support demonstrated how his government's conservatism led to ambivalence toward the Soviets as allies. 29

Division and Turmoil Despite their common economic interests, Kurdistan and Azerbaijan had competing territorial claims and a history of mutual ethnic antipathy, which created friction between the two governments. The increasing radicalism of the Tabriz government engendered hostility in conservative Kurdistan, exacerbating this friction. From the beginning of Pishevari's government, there was clearly a leftist faction that urged a greater degree of militancy and social revolution. More moderate elements, predominantly natives of Iranian Azerbaijan, insisted that social cohesion was necessary for a national democratic revolution and advocated a gradual, reformist approach to social change to preserve this cohesion. Pishevari attempted to preserve a coalition between these conflicting groups and, in the process, seemed to acquire a mixture of moderation and militancy. He, like the moderates, desired a broad social base. However, at times he described this broad social base in Azerbaijan as a necessary first step to revolution throughout Iran, an idea that had the support of the militants. According to deputy premier Jahanshahlou, this idea was prevalent among the core leadership group:

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T h e s k e l e t o n o f the D e m o c r a t i c Party of Azerbaijan, e s p e c i a l l y the l e a d e r s h i p — t h e majority of the central c o m m i t t e e , including Pishevari, Kaviyan, and m y s e l f — w e r e members of the old Communist party of Iran, or [more recently converted] Marxists. . . . Our ultimate goal was to a c h i e v e a worker's revolution. We were using the national revolution as a tactic to reach this g o a l . 3 0

A wide range of viewpoints had already been in evidence in the prerevolutionary autumn, when Pishevari had noted the existence of bitter criticism: E v e n in the general meeting of the party, s o m e of the members accused the central c o m m i t t e e of being too conservative [saying] that if w e did not start demonstrating our power, the members of the party would l o s e their h i g h spirits, and that if w e did not take a c t i o n s o o n , the reactionary centra! government would destroy us. 3 1

According to various Azerbaijani sources, the radical elements Pishevari described were primarily mohajers from the Caucasus. Colonel Sarab (pseudonym) told the author: "The mohajers, although speaking Azerbaijani, were perceived by the local Azerbaijani population as outsiders." The mohajers' motto was "Death to the capitalists, death to the landlords." 3 2 Their political b e h a v i o r — s h a p e d by the environment in the Soviet C a u c a s u s — h a d , not surprisingly, given them a more class-oriented worldview than that held by the Azerbaijanis from Iran. On January 26, Pishevari announced the consolidation of local militias into a national army, and inaugurated conscription in an attempt to limit the power of the fedayis. He had referred to their excesses: "In several places, it has been noted that the fedayis have gone beyond their duties and interfered in the affairs of the g o v e r n m e n t . We hope to create a national army and stop such occurrences." Some fedayis were to be integrated into the national army; others were to be sent back to their previous employments. 3 3 According to Rossow, the U.S. consul in Tabriz, the attempt to limit the fedayis' power did not succeed in mitigating the developing rift between the moderates and the radicals. "Disagreement," he claimed, "has even shaken [the] internal organization of [the government] and party directorate to the reported annoyance of [their] Soviet m e n t o r s . " 3 4 (Rossow believed that the Azerbaijan revolution was a Soviet conspiracy.) Certainly, in attempting to co-opt the fedayis' momentum, the government adopted some strong revolutionary slogans; the new People's Army was told that its duty was to capture Iran from "reactionary social forces." 35 T h e Tudeh despatched officers from its military network to reorganize the new national army. However, trust never developed between the fedayi officers, mostly mohajers, and the Farsi-speaking military men sent from Tehran, who were regarded as alien, both because of their Persian origins and because of their association with the Tehran-centric Tudeh. The fedayis resisted reorganization; fedayi pressure repeatedly caused the replacement of the army chief-of-staff. Pishevari removed Colonel Azar, the first chief-of-staff of the People's Army the

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Tudeh military network sent to Azerbaijan, for refusing to join the ADP; Pishevari's own long-standing personal antagonism toward Tudeh leaders made him favor the fedayis.36 In this atmosphere of instability, in which the fedayis themselves remained the most stable element in the armed forces, they preserved a great measure of their strength and independence. A fedayi committee remained in the army as an independent entity to oversee their affairs. 37 The fedayis and the militant mohajers gradually assumed increasing authority. The withdrawal of Soviet troops, first from Tabriz, and from all Azerbaijan by early May, removed restraint on the radicals, as the departure of such Soviet leaders as Orzhonikidze had in the Gilan affair. On April 5, Rossow reported that the "relaxation of party discipline"—presumably a result of the recent Soviet withdrawal from Tabriz— had resulted in the arming of "irresponsible elements." 38 A reign of terror, resulting from the gradual accumulation of power by the radicals, singled out as enemies landowners who had assisted the ccntral government earlier in the revolution, and black marketeers and speculators who resisted or ignored the government's economic controls; later, peasants who sided with the central government were also targeted. Land reform was a project to which the mohajers were very devoted, and those who opposed it often became their victims. 39 Society was increasingly militarized and regimented. Repeated "border incidents" provoked by General Razmara and the minister of war, General Ahmad Ahmadi, combined with the central government's economic boycott to create a siege mentality in Azerbaijan. Military readiness was emphasized throughout the province: Government employees received military training; all ADP members were required to have three hours of training per day and to be prepared to act in defense of the autonomous government. Women, too, volunteered to join the army. Party memoranda in border regions such as Zanjan were required to be written in the style of war reports, even when they did not relate to military matters. 40 Government requisitioning of food supplies began, as it had in Gilan. As much as 20 percent of the harvest was taken from peasants and as much as 70 percent from landlords. Attempts to smuggle grain out of Azerbaijan were punished by death. The fedayis and the peasant committees (some of the latter dominated by mohajers) conducted the requisitioning, which was designed to feed the urban population, the army, and the burgeoning bureaucracy; the bad harvest of 1946 made the imposition on the peasants especially severe, and tension between the urban and rural segments of the population mounted, though urban workers shared the economic hardships. The government reduced the nonwage subsidies of workers in state-run factories, causing considerable resentment. 41 Religious authorities in Qum issued a fatwa declaring a holy war against the Azerbaijani Democrats. Considering the fatwa in light of their economic hardships, the ever-religious peasants developed hostility toward the autonomous government and its secular political education programs. In some areas, notably Zanjan and Ardabil, the religious authorities had prevented the peasants from

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taking advantage of the Azerbaijan government's land reform. In other areas distant from Tabriz, and where religious figures were powerful, peasants had continued to pay the landlords the rent required under prerevolutionary contracts. There were also cultural clashes with the mohajers who were implementing the market regulations and requisitioning that the peasants, often newly propertied, resented. By the end of the revolutionary regime, villages that had previously been the main social base of the autonomous government verged on open rebellion. 42 The peasants increasingly anticipated the central government forces' entry into the area. As a result, those who had benefited from land reform often returned the land to its former owners to avoid future reprisals—as well as the onerous exactions of the Tabriz government. 43 The leftist faction's radicalism also alarmed the middle classes; the increasing power of the mohajers, some of whom advocated social revolution, clearly threatened their interests, as did rumors that radicals within the ADP advocated uniting Iranian Azerbaijan with Soviet Azerbaijan. 44 Under heavy religious influence because of the bazaar's close ties to the clergy, the middle classes increasingly adopted the clergy's picture of the ADP as inimical to Islam. 4 5 The Tabriz government's inability to back up its currency also frightened the bourgeoisie. Many bazaaris who had earlier supported the ADP panicked and attempted to transfer their property to Tehran and other parts of the country. Pishevari noted: "Many treacherous merchants have transferred the majority of their funds and merchandise to Tehran, and the bazaar is empty of merchandise. We have attempted to halt this transfer; however, there is a temporary economic crisis," which, Pishevari said, was preventing the government from collecting taxes needed to implement further reforms. The premier offered to make treaties with foreign countries to restore the flow of capital to Azerbaijan, so that the merchants and landowners would be financially secure, and "the unity which has enabled us to achieve political power" would be restored. 46 In fact, however, the early unity was never recovered. After the Soviet departure, relations with the Kurdish government steadily deteriorated. The Soviets had helped moderate early disputes between the two and had encouraged them to sign their April 1946 treaty of mutual cooperation. By this treaty, the Kurdish and Azerbaijani governments recognized the rights of ethnic minorities within their states and promised military assistance to one another in the event either was attacked. However, the single most divisive issue—the territorial boundary between the two autonomous provinces—was not resolved; nor was the governance of the ethnically mixed cities of Rezaieh, Miandoab, and Khoi. Azeris and Kurds fought in these disputed cities, while Assyrians and Armenians—radicalized by Reza Shah's discriminatory policies— tended to side with the Azerbaijani government in these clashes. The Christian alliance with the radical ADP increased the alienation of conservative, Moslem Kurds. Economic disputes, particularly the collection of revenues, added to the two governments' antipathy for one another. Fear of Tabriz's ambitions for

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political and economic domination of Kurdistan pervaded the leadership of the Kurdish republic, as it did the merchant class. As noted in the previous chapter, Qavam tried to perpetuate this historic racial antagonism. 47 In September 1946, the British consul in Tabriz summarized the deterioration within autonomous Azerbaijan: O n all fronts, the D e m o c r a t s are embarrassed. Their financial position is desperate, Kurdish activities in U r m i e h [ R e z a i e h ] are k e e p i n g them o n tenterhooks, w h i l e forces of irregulars [particularly S h a h s a v a n s ] , e q u i p p e d , say the D e m o c r a t s , by the Persian authorities, have b e e n in c o n f l i c t with the Feda'is in Ardabel. T h e Provincial G o v e r n m e n t s c h e m e for the c o l l e c t i o n of grain . . . is m e e t i n g with resistance f r o m l a n d o w n e r s and farmers alike, and tax d e f a l c a t i o n s k e e p the G o v e r n m e n t tills e m p t y . . . . The scarcity of bread is b e c o m i n g more acute and the Party has to contend with a populace of which 9 0 per cent are either hostile or c o m p l e t e l y apathetic. Trade is stagnant, as p e o p l e w h o have a n y m o n e y either hide it, or transfer it to Tehran for security. 4 8

In Kurdistan, "divided authority" had been present from the creation of the republic. There, the differences between the rival power centers were tribal and personal, rather than ideological, as they were in Azerbaijan. The Barzanis' control of a large proportion of the Mahabad republic's firepower made Mulla Mustafa a serious rival to Qazi's control of the region. The army of the Mahabad republic was a conglomeration of tribal units under the chieftains' command. Any military action, defensive or offensive, that the republic undertook required the approval of virtually all tribal leaders, including the Barzanis. Since most other tribal leaders disliked the Barzanis, this was practically impossible. 49 Qazi's fragmented administration continued its moderate course up until its demise. In feudal and prefeudal Kurdistan, radical ideas were restricted to small segments of the urban middle class. The continuing provincialism of the revolutionary governments alienated liberal elements in Tehran. While many in Iran's capital observed the progressive reforms of the Azerbaijani government—particularly land reform— with some enthusiasm, they viewed the Azeris' and Kurds' insistence on their own national identities with distrust. An article in Kayhan, written by Nushad, reflected: If I were Pishevari, instead of talking about Azerbaijani independence, the nation of Azerbaijan, and the Turkish language . . . I w o u l d have g i v e n the matter of Azerbaijan secondary importance; I w o u l d h a v e said that Azerbaijanis are, like other people, Iranians; I w o u l d have indicated that, for m e , there is no d i f f e r e n c e b e t w e e n the p e o p l e of Tabriz, Rezaieh, Shiraz. . . , 5 0

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Qavam's minister of education, Bahar, addressed the ADP with biting irony: Y o u r i n s i s t e n c e that A z e r b a i j a n i is your mother t o n g u e , and that therefore it should be taught in your schools, must mean y o u support Arabic being taught in s c h o o l s in Khuzistan, since Arabic is s p o k e n there. If c h i l d r e n in B a l u c h i s t a n s p e a k B a l u c h i , A r m e n i a n s s p e a k Armeni, Kurds speak Kurdi, Lurs speak Luri . . . and other areas speak their o w n local tongue, can you imagine the anarchy that our culture will face? Or m a y b e you are requesting that this c o n c e s s i o n be g i v e n to Azerbaijanis o n l y . 5 1

Bahar, it will be recalled, had voiced similar concerns about the provincialism of the post-World War I revolutionary movements. Kasravi, an Azeri himself, wrote a famous book attacking the provincialism that had emerged as a result of the post-Reza Shah power vacuum and expressing fears that this provincialism would cause Iran to disintegrate: "Azerbaijan has always had a history, language, and race in common with the rest of Iran. The Turkic language has been imposed by invading Turkish tribes; Turkic has always been foreign to Azerbaijan." 52 Because of his increasing fears of national disintegration, Kasravi even defended Reza Shah's centralization policies. Nationalist apprehensions were reinforced by the revolts in Khuzistan and Fars. A Nushad article in Kayhan reprimanded: "Because of your [Pishevari's] actions, now Khuzistan is" also talking about autonomy. 53 The young, intolerant Persian nationalism of the day, even when expressed by such respected and educated men as Kasravi and Mossadegh, reverted to advocating a strong central government. The legacy of Great Powers attempting to take advantage of regional differences contributed to this attitude, as did the complete collapse of Tehran's authority in the World War I era. Kasravi and other nationalist intellectuals continued to push for Iran's linguistic and cultural unity. Unfortunately, their statements tended to be insulting manifestations of Persian chauvinism, as in the procourt paper Ettela'at: "Whereas we are ashamed of Turkish as a disgraceful stigma of the humiliations Iran suffered under the barbarian invaders, we are proud of Persian as our rich literary language that has contributed generously to world civilization." 54 Originally sympathetic to Pishevari's progressive social policies and avowal of constitutional principles, the Iran Party—which shared the nationalistic concerns of liberals—became increasingly disturbed by the ADP's provincialism. Three articles in the party's publication, Iran-i Ma (Our Iran), in December 1945, insisted on the necessity for Farsi as a common language and opposed Azerbaijani nationhood as a concept that could result in Iran's disintegration. Azerbaijan, according to the Iran Party, was united with the rest of Iran by a common history and by a common literary tradition—and the literature that united Iran was in Farsi. 55 Karim Sanjabi, summarizing the Iran Party's position on Azerbaijan and Kurdistan, said:

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Our party believed strongly that Iran is composed of one nation and one race and must have one strong centralized government, with a centralized administration, with one united, centralized, national army. It must have a single official language. Iran must remain indivisible. 5 6

The Tudeh, too, grew increasingly antipathetic toward the autonomous governments; Pishevari's personal friction with Tudeh leaders contributed to this antipathy. However, Tudeh leaders initially tried to gloss over their differences with the ADP to preserve solidarity between the leftist parties, hoping that events in Azerbaijan could initiate social revolution throughout Iran. Some Tudeh writers observed that, since Azerbaijani autonomy accorded with the constitution, it should be respected, as should the Azeris' separate culture and nationality. 57 The ADP's continuing emphasis on local autonomy frustrated this hope. Tudeh leaders were largely unsympathetic to the Azeris' linguistic demands, for reasons similar to those of other Iranian nationalists. An editorial in a paper managed by a party intellectual (which usually reflected the views of the left wing of the Iran Party as well as those of the Tudeh) stated, "We realize that our brothers in Azerbaijan have a strong attachment to their local language. . . . But we hope this attachment is not so extreme that it will weaken Farsi, the national and traditional language of the State." 58 A May 1946 article by Ovanessian praised various ADP actions, including the establishment of freedom for linguistic and religious minorities, but insisted that the Azerbaijani Democrats channel their revolutionary efforts to the nation, rather than confining them to their province. 59 While the Tudeh insisted on Tehran's sovereignty, cultural as well as political, over Azerbaijan, the CCFTU did not. Centralized control over the labor organizations that composed the CCFTU had not been fully established, so the union organization retained many of the views of its provincial components. Furthermore, many CCFTU leaders, including Reza Rusta, were Azeris. The union organ, Zafar, expressed sympathy with the Azeris' and Kurds' linguistic grievances: "[T]he recognition of Azeri as an offical language will not weaken the unity of Iran . . . . But if we refuse to accept reality and recognize the existence of Azeri, we will alienate a large minority and thus undermine Iran."60 The Tudeh, like other nationalist parties of the period, referred to the Azerbaijan revolution as a problem that the government must solve. Because of the Tudeh's emphasis on class issues, it interpreted the "problem" primarily in economic terms, leading it to undervalue the revolution's ethnic underpinnings. A party writer, Anvar Khamei, commented in Rahbar that the linguistic issue was secondary, and that the crisis was caused primarily by the ruling class's economic and political exploitation. 6 1 Pishevari's reply to accusations of provincialism was that the ADP movement was inevitable, regardless of redress by the central government:

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Azerbaijani p e o p l e are not comparable to people from Khuzistan, Khorasan, or other parts of Iran. They are, in a broad sense, Iranians; but in a particular sense, they are Azerbaijanis. You cannot apply the p o l i c i e s that are implemented in Khuzistan in Azerbaijan. . . . Azerbaijan must maintain its peculiarity; you cannot i m p o s e the language of others on a six-year-old Azerbaijani. . . . Those people who are attempting to show our m o v e m e n t in a different fashion are committing a crime. 6 2

But ethnic issues were not alone in separating the ADP from the Tudeh: The latter, in this period, followed a reformist but class-oriented path; the former, on the other hand, pursued a national revolution without a consistent attitude toward class warfare. In May and June, when Pishevari and an ADP delegation came to Tehran to negotiate with Qavam, they also had extensive contacts with the Tudeh. At a public meeting in which the Tudeh and ADP stated their policies, the rift between the two organizations was apparent. Radmanesh warned the ADP not to endanger the labor movement by fragmenting it, saying that "those who try to appeal both to the employers and employees will inevitably fail. . . . The first duty of all patriots and progressives is to recognize the united organization of the Iranian working class, and to work for the forward march of the labor movement." 63 Javid, from the right wing of the ADP, presented a far different view. Unity between classes, he argued, was essential to a successful revolution: "The people of Azerbaijan have spent more time on action and less time on theory. Their leaders have fortunately realized that they must have internal unity among all classes, for their adversaries do not differentiate among workers, landowners, merchants, and peasants." 64 While the ADP was not, as a whole, class-oriented, it was certainly revolutionary. In the period when the Tudeh was participating in the parliament, supporting Qavam, and even joining the cabinet in an effort to enhance its position and enact reforms, this caused no end of friction between the two parties. According to a member of the ADP youth organization: "The Tudeh Party of Iran is, according to its statutes, a parliamentary party. The achievement of a revolution and social change is beyond their ability. Whereas the Democratic Party of Azerbaijan has a duty of achieving a national democratic revolution." 65 Despite the ethnic bases of the revolution in Azerbaijan, Pishevari and Daneshyan advocated extending the revolution throughout the country: "The government of the country should be the government of the masses. . . . With the help of other oppressed masses of Iran, we shall free Iran." 66 While in Tehran, Pishevari lectured the Tudeh on the need for a nationwide armed uprising. Bozorg Alavi objected that any such uprising in Tehran or Isfahan would be immediately crushed by the army, the police, the gendarmes, and armed tribesmen. 6 7 The correlation of forces clearly mitigated in favor of a gradual parliamentary approach to social change, Tudeh leaders argued. When the

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Tudeh joined Qavam's cabinet, the ADP-Tudeh friction became more pronounced. In November, after the Tudeh was expelled from the cabinet, it and the ADP briefly arranged to cooperate more closely with one another; but the Azerbaijan government fell in December, so this alliance was short-lived. 68 While the ADP and the Tudeh, however uneasy their relations, at least kept the channels of communication open, the KDP had no relations whatsoever with the Tudeh. KDP leaders suspected the Tudeh's secularism and class orientation, and the Tudeh, for its part, was leery of the conservative, tribal bases of the KDP. Military cooperation among the three parties was therefore virtually impossible. Racial, ideological, and personal differences among these organizations (and, for that matter, within them) hindered a workable united front. The different political socializations of the leaders—Persian intellectuals in the Tudeh, mohajer militants in the ADP, and conservative Kurdish tribal figures in the KDP—made it difficult for the parties to pursue common interests, and, as Keshavarz wrote to the author, a lack of political experience handicapped leaders of all parties—Reza Shah's dictatorship had not provided an environment where political experience could be gained. The resulting fragmentation contributed greatly to the collapse of the revolutions in northern Iran, 69 as did religious figures' increasing encouragement of antirevolutionary activities. The Fedayin-i Islam (Moslem Devotees) were organized in 1945-1946; in early spring this organization assassinated the famous iconoclast Kasravi. In June, Qavam closed down the Fedayin-i Islam's paper for provoking public demonstrations demanding a mandatory return of the veil for women, and in the same month, he arrested Ayatollah Abul Qassem Kashani, Khomeini's mentor, for organizing antigovernment protests among the bazaaris.10 The court, seeking allies against its formidable array of parliamentary and revolutionary enemies, encouraged the ulama. During the Azerbaijan crisis, the shah attended the wellpublicized funeral of the marja-i taglid, the leading ayatollah of the Shi'ite religious hierarchy. The Tudeh, too, tried to win over the clergy. An article written on the anniversary of Imam Ali's assassination praised Islam as a great force that threatened the social and economic position of slaveholders and oppressors in the Arabian peninsula. Even the autonomous government of Azerbaijan was inaugurated with references to the Qur'an. 71 The clergy remained suspicious of both the Tudeh and the ADP. The presence of many Christian Armenians and Assyrians in both parties encouraged their belief that these organizations were secular, and therefore a threat to the clergy's political power. Many members of the ulama spoke against the Tudeh, despite the latter's deliberate appeals to religious sentiments. In several cities, Tudeh headquarters were attacked and burned by fanatical mobs led by religious figures. In Azerbaijan, as mentioned, a fatwa was declared against the ADP. By February 1946, the local clergy was often engaged in verbal and physical assaults on the ADP, which it condemned as atheistic. 72

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The Collapse of the Revolutionary Governments Once assurances of U.S. support gave Qavam the confidence he needed to mobilize troops against the autonomous governments, they were doomed. The Soviet troops had long been gone, and the Soviet goals in Iran had already been achieved. Even Baghirov's support had been seriously undermined by the increasing unpopularity of the Azerbaijani government. The arrival of the government troops was the coup de grace; the revolutionary regimes were already collapsing from within. The overriding cause of the Azerbaijan regime's internal dissolution was the segmentation in its leadership. Radical mohajers, particularly Daneshyan, who advocated social revolution and a war of liberation throughout Iran, alienated the populace. Moderate Azeri nationalists, including Javid and Shabistari, simply wanted autonomy for Azerbaijan within the Iranian constitution; more militant mohajers advocated a social revolution. Pishevari eventually gravitated toward the radicals, but the regime's policies were never well-defined. Mass assimilation based on the regime's early promotion of an Azeri "national myth," and on its many progressive social laws, shrank as economic and political exigencies loomed and the reign of terror intensified. Hostility to government price controls and food requisitions made the middle classes and the peasantry increasingly receptive to the religious figures' calls for a holy war on the ADP. The peasants and bazaaris were alienated by secular propaganda, though the government did avoid overtly anti-Islamic campaigns such as Ehsanollah's in Gilan. However, religion and the social hierarchy that religion reinforced, played a major role in the government's failure to retain its mass base. Religion also helped provoke the conservative Shahsavans against the Tabriz government; like the Gilan government, the Tabriz regime was under constant harrassment by this powerful tribe. 73 In the beginning of the Azerbaijan revolution, the Azeris—with Reza Shah's oppression still fresh in their minds—had a fairly strong sense of national identity, which enabled the ADP to pursue a successful social mobilization. However, the movement's lack of a cohesive ideology dissolved the revolutionary masses' zeal. 74 Within Kurdistan, too, segmentation made social mobilization that might have contributed to the survival of the revolution difficult. There was a strong disparity between the modem nationalism of the urban Kurds of Rezaieh and Mahabad and the patrimonial loyalties of rural peasants, landlords, tribesmen, and tribal leaders; tribal loyalty was far stronger than Kurdish nationalism. The segmentation of Kurdistan into mutually antipathetic tribes and the personal rivalries between the chieftains prevented the majority of Kurds from developing a supratribal sense of nationality. While the Mahabad regime had mass support, it did not have mass assimilation: Many Kurds supported Qazi's government simply because their tribal chiefs were allied with it.

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The Tabriz government's insistence on retaining authority over Kurdistan made military and political cooperation between the two revolutionary governments impossible. The traditional communal antagonisms between Kurds and Azeris, which Reza Shah's repression had intensified, "rendered any attempt at co-operation between the two rebel regimes unattainable, even in the interest of survival." 75 In December 1946, both revolutionary regimes surrendered to the central government. In Azerbaijan, Pishevari and Daneshyan still urged resistance, but Javid and Shabistari urged surrender. In a vote of the provincial council, the latter view prevailed, and the regime fell. 76 Much as Haydar's faction had done at the end of the Gilan revolution, the ADP sought to avoid causing an Iranian civil war that could involve the Great Powers. War involving the Soviet Union would endanger the socialist base and might prevent the ultimate victory of revolution in Azerbaijan. After the surrender of the Tabriz government, the moderates Javid and Shabistari remained to keep a semblance of order until the Tehran government's troops arrived. Pishevari, Daneshyan,Biriya, and many other ADP leaders fled to the Soviet Union. 77 The Kurds, disheartened by the Azeris' surrender, also gave up without a fight. Qazi remained with his people, as had Kuchik, and was executed by a court martial along with his brother Sadr-i Qazi and cousin Saif-i Qazi. The tribal loyalties of the Kurds became overwhelmingly evident. The Kurdish Shakkak tribe even attacked the Tabriz government as it surrendered, and many other tribes followed suit. The Barzanis did not adhere to Qazi's surrender but attempted to fight the central government single-handed. After wandering through Iraq and back through Iran, the Barzanis eventually took refuge in the Soviet Union. 78 Azerbaijan and Kurdistan both fell under martial law. In Azerbaijan, the repression was particularly severe. Thousands were killed: Religious figures led anti-ADP crowds; Assyrians and Armenians who had supported the ADP were massacred. Thousands more, suspected of cooperation with the ADP, were deported to southern Iran, and Azeri was declared a "foreign language." Publishing in Azeri was forbidden, as was speaking it in the educational system. The economic situation in Azerbaijan worsened so much in the next few years that people openly demanded Pishevari's return. 79 The fall of the Tabriz and Mahabad governments, as well as the issues raised in the course of the revolutions, had an extremely divisive effect on the Tudeh Party. Militants were disappointed that the revolution had not spread throughout Iran, and many patriots in the party were disturbed by the Azerbaijan government's demands for autonomy. These overlapping groups' dissatisfaction with the Azerbaijan revolution and its collapse resulted in massive defection. In a book written in the immediate aftermath of the Azerbaijan revolution, Do Ravesh Baraye Yek Hadaf (Two Approaches to the Same Goal), Maleki castigated the Tudeh for "underestimating the nationalist forces in the social struggle of the toilers." Describing the events in Azerbaijan, he criticized the

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failure to utilize nationalist forces, and, by implication, the party's reliance on the Soviet Union: "Whenever we criticized the party leadership, asking, 'Why are you not taking power; why are you allying with Qavam?' the person objecting was always admonished, 'You are weakening the international democratic front.'" 80 Maleki advocated a centralized, well-disciplined leadership as a tool to achieve political power. He, his brother Hossein Malik, and other staunch dissenters, including Jalal al-Ahmad (editor of the monthly Nameh-i Mardom) and Anvar Khamei, formed the Jamayat-i Sosialist-i Tudeh-i Iran—the Socialist Group of the Tudeh Party of Iran. This group of dissenters repeated many of the criticisms of the Tudeh's tactics and organization and favored the development of Iran's internal economy to eliminate its economic enslavement to imperialist powers. 81 Anticipating expulsion, Maleki and the others resigned their Tudeh membership. 82 The party's response to this wave of criticism and defection was an organizational move to the left accompanied by an ideological and tactical move to the center. In December 1946, a plenum of the central committee elected a Provisional Executive Committee (PEC) and charged it with reorganizing the party to adapt it to the new conditions of struggle. The new party, like the old one, resolved to represent the moderate demands of provincial branches and linguistic minorities and to retain its alliance with the USSR. Although Ahmad Ghassemi, speaking on behalf of the Party's new leadership, bitterly denounced the critics, some of their criticisms had to be incorporated in party policy if the Tudeh was to survive under escalating police repression. 83 The PEC and, by 1948, the Second Party Congress, resolved on a two-pronged strategy. While the Tudeh would continue to support the constitution and attempt to lead a broad struggle against "the danger of a new dictatorship," it would simultaneously become a more tightly organized body of militants. Centralism was tightened to prevent a recurrence of factionalism, elaborate provisions were made for reprimanding members who failed to adhere to majority decisions. Ehsan Tabari, who was now the dynamic leader of the Tudeh youth organization, led the effort to indoctrinate party members to ensure ideological cohesion. 84 To insulate the party hierarchy from further criticism, the PEC and the new central committee were composed predominantly of figures who had had no role in the Azerbaijan affair. Many of the old leaders, including Kambaksh and Iraj Iskandari, fled the country to avoid punitive measures by the government, and a new leadership had to arise. Prominent among the new party heads were Ghassemi; Nuraldin Kianouri, a professor of architecture at the University of Tehran and a brother-in-law of Prince Muzaffar Firuz; and Tabari, a member of the Fifty-Three. 8 5 In a 1947 article entitled "Ghanon Chist? Va Che Goneh Bevojod Amad? ("What is Law? And How Was It Created?"), Ghassemi concluded that the Iranian constitution had to be adapted. The implication was that legal reform was as valid a means of social change as revolution. 86 The Tudeh's old political alliances, along with much of its membership,

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had vanished with the collapse of the Azerbaijan Republic. The principal objection of its former allies, including the Iran Party, to associating with the Tudeh was its support for the Soviet Union and the Azerbaijan revolution. 87 Seeking other allies to protect their party from government repression, some Tudeh leaders, particularly Kianouri, established closer ties with Razmara. After a February 4, 1949 attempt on the shah's life that implicated both Razmara and the Tudeh, Razmara declared martial law and had potential rivals, including Qavam, Seyyed Zia, and Ayatollah Kashani, arrested. The shah's government, unable to retaliate directly against Razmara, instead placed the blame on the Tudeh and declared the party illegal; Razmara apparently assisted in the escape of Tudeh members jailed in this wave of repression. The Tudeh's alliance with the strong military man Razmara parallels the PCP's decision to support Reza Khan after the failure of the Gilan revolution. 88 The origins of the revolutions in Azerbaijan and Kurdistan lay in the indigenous populations' severe sense of alienation from the central government in Tehran. Like the revolution in Gilan, both northern provinces' revolutions began with substantial support in both urban and rural areas; increasing segmentation in the leadership, as well as in the population, was a primary factor in the dissolution of their social bases. The different social backgrounds of both revolutionary leaders and Tudeh organizers made ideological and tactical cooperation difficult, as it had in Gilan; in the northern revolutions, too, an element of personal friction that cannot be fully attributed to ideological differences contributed to divisions. The failure of radical elements in Azerbaijan to take local cultural and religious traditions into consideration hampered the leaders' attempts to attain mass assimilation. In Kurdistan, tribal segmentation and the Kurds' lack of a truly national identity prevented a successful social mobilization. These internal failures combined with the international situation to destroy the revolutionary governments. Despite the failures of the two revolutions of 1945-1946, their many achievements should not be overlooked. In Azerbaijan, much-admired land reforms were established. Corruption was successfully fought with a combination of civic spirit and harsh penalties. Female suffrage was established for the first time in Iranian history. In the field of education, far greater progress was made in Pishevari's one year than in all of Reza Shah's reign; the university and many of the schools established under the autonomous government are still functioning today. The regime's achievements in roads and communications, too, are lasting testimonies to its initial vitality. In Kurdistan, the achievements were less dramatic; however, the use of culture to inculcate a sense of Kurdish nationalism had long-lasting effects. Kurdish nationalist and revolutionary movements of the present day trace their roots to this period. Qazi's regime laid the foundation for the transformation of tribal nationalism to modern nationalism. Its economic achievements, consisting primarily of the moderation of landlord-peasant relationships, were modest but tangible. Under the Mahabad

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government, too, Kurds gained a limited administrative experience and, for the first time in the modem era, governed themselves. As in the 1920s, the Communist movement fell into disarray during and after the failure of the autonomous governments: Factions of the Tudeh moved to the left; remnants allied with the "reformist" military strong man Razmara to prevent Iran's disintegration and to promote social transformation. As in the 1920s, a strong man emerged from the crisis and built strength to challenge the existing ruler. Also as in the 1920s, government repression, dictatorship, and militarization followed the failure of the revolutions. Whereas, earlier, nationalism had been undeveloped and amorphous enough to fall in line behind Reza Khan, the liberal nationalism that emerged as a potent force after the Azerbaijan revolution was, though still centralist, more antiauthoritarian; Mossadegh's liberal nationalism was to have great repercussions in Iran and throughout the world.

9 The Rise of Iranian Nationalism and Reform from Above

If we do not implement from below.

reforms

from

above,

we will face

a

revolution

— M . R. Pahlavi (1949) The greatest flaw of the National Front was the lack of a coherent ideology and organizational structure. —Karim Sanjabi to the author (1987)

After the failure of the northern revolutions, Iranian nationalists continued to strive for the goal of the constitution: an independent Iran with a truly representative government that would be responsive to popular sentiments. The goal remained elusive; international and domestic environments prevented its realization. The shah, with the help of the army and the United States, emerged as the center of power and, in an unsuccessful attempt to co-opt liberal nationalism's reformist momentum, launched his White Revolution. Razmara's Power: 1948-1951 Mohammad Reza Shah tried to consolidate his position in Iran after a February 1949 attempt on his life. He suppressed the Tudeh and announced his frustration with the limits that the constitution placed on his power; to modify these limits, he convened a controversial Constituent Assembly filled by his supporters. In an effort to win the clergy's support, the court paper Ettela'at announced that the assembly's convention would not injure religious authorities or principles. Responding to an allegation that it would initiate female suffrage, Manucher Eqbal, the shah's close confidant, dismissed such speculation as "manure."1 (These gestures testified to the strength the clergy had regained since Reza Shah's departure.) The assembly created a Senate with a four-year term— half of whose members were to be appointed by the shah—and empowered the shah to dissolve both houses of parliament, an authoritarian procedure that 179

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outraged most major political figures in Iran. Hussein Fatemi, a French-educated journalist from a prominent Isfahan family who became Mossadegh's closest associate, later described the Senate as "an assembly supported by the old ruling class, which was convened to create a dam against the social changes." 2 Mossadegh too opposed the Constituent Assembly and its creations; Qavam's objections prompted the shah to strip him of the title granted him in the wake of the Soviet withdrawal. 3 General Razmara was a stumbling block in the shah's quest for absolute power. After Qavam's departure in late 1947, Razmara, as chief-of-staff, tried to manipulate the Iranian Majlis and premiers. He established a firm grip on the armed forces; detached the gendarmes from the interior ministry and placed them under his own command; and removed from command positions officers likely to side with the shah in a power struggle. The general's manipulations were clearly directed against court favorites in both the army and the government. Razmara openly ridiculed various royal plans, including Mohammad Reza Shah's plans to expand the army. 4 Razmara remains an enigmatic figure; different persons have expressed to the author widely varied views on his goals. Some have suggested he wished to overthrow the monarchy and establish a republic; others have claimed he wished to reestablish the Qajar dynasty; still others have described him as a faithful soldier who was serving the shah to the best of his ability. 5 Razmara's goals included strong economic reforms: He wanted to overhaul the taxation system so that landowners and manufacturers would fulfill their tax obligations; he wanted extensive land redistribution. Inefficiency and corruption were his main targets. Without action to correct the economic and social injustices that he believed led to Communist activity, using force to suppress the Tudeh—Razmara felt—was useless. He also advocated government decentralization, with the creation of regional anjomans.6 Internal and external factors had combined to bring Razmara to power: His reformism had won him the support of some elements in the Tudeh; it had also brought him U.S. and Soviet support. Because he showed promise of making Iran a strong buffer between East and West, both sides welcomed his ascension, much as Britain and Soviet Russia had welcomed Reza Khan in the 1920s. The U.S. State Department's assessment of Razmara was cautiously optimistic: If Razmara becomes prime minister it will be with the firm intention of remaining so indefinitely. . . . Even if he dies of overwork in five years or is killed he will, nevertheless, have carried out s o m e desirable reforms. The danger is that . . . he may kill initiative and independence as Reza Shah did. But he is a more intelligent and informed man than Reza Shah was. . . . As Prime Minister he would probably be neither so destructive as Reza Shah nor so constructive as Ataturk. 7

The Truman government, alarmed by Justice William O. Douglas's reports of

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massive corruption in Iran and misery in the agricultural countryside, informed the shah that U.S. aid would be contingent on the Iranian government cleaning house. The recent fall of the similarly corrupt Nationalist government in China contributed to the United States' policy. 8 Grudgingly, the shah enlisted Razmara's aid in promoting internal reforms. The monarch hoped to use Razmara's rise to divert antiauthoritarian sentiments from himself. On June 26, 1950, he appointed Razmara prime minister by royal farman, without consulting the Majlis. U.S. Ambassador Henry Grady welcomed Razmara as a progressive, dynamic leader. Because of this U.S. welcome and Razmara's insistence on parliamentary ratification of a supplementary oil agreement with the AIOC, nationalist politicians were aroused against the new premier; some called him a British agent. 9 When Razmara acquiesced in the shah's (never realized) plans to convene a second constituent assembly to grant the ruler veto power, the Majlis lineup against Razmara, headed by Mossadegh, tightened. 10 The shah had succeeded in deflecting antiauthoritarian sentiments. Meanwhile, Razmara initiated government purges and set the wheels of economic and administrative reform in motion, as he had advocated. He removed almost all the former leading figures in Iranian politics, including many of Qavam's political associates, from government posts; he barred Qavam from holding any governmental positions; he introduced bills for distributing state lands among the peasantry and establishing provincial assemblies; he relaxed the suppression of the Tudeh front organizations. Despite U.S. support during his rise, while in office Razmara's policies were increasingly pro-Soviet. He signed a trade agreement with the Soviet Union and settled all territorial disputes on the Russo-Iranian border. He restricted the movement of U.S. military advisors, closed the Voice of America office in Tehran, and removed U.S. advisors overseeing the seven-year economic plan. He refused to involve Iran in a proWestern military pact. While some of these measures were designed to restore equilibrium to Iranian foreign affairs, others seemed strongly pro-Soviet. Razmara's son claims that his father had been convinced by the events in Azerbaijan that a close relationship with the Soviet Union was essential to Iran's survival. 1 1 Razmara's strong inclination toward the Soviet Union contributed to his downfall by losing him U.S. and British support. An old rumor that he favored a Communist takeover in Iran, presumably based on his marriage to a relative of Kianouri, gained new credence. 12 Mossadegh particularly opposed Razmara's trade agreement with the Soviet Union, which he regarded as a reaffirmation of the dangerous policy of positive equilibrium. He also opposed the creation of provincial assemblies: Referring to the danger of national disintegration that the revolution in Azerbaijan had demonstrated, Mossadegh said that regional anjomans could enable the Great Powers to dismember Iran. He also feared that Razmara might rise to absolute power, as Reza Khan had. 13 While nationalists were aggravated by Razmara's

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

attempt to pass the pro-British agreement with the AIOC and by the trade agreement with the Soviets, conservative religious figures viewed his close relations with the Tudeh with hostility. Ayatollah Kashani (who had personal reasons for resenting the general's power, since Razmara had repeatedly imprisoned him) encouraged "sincere Muslims and patriotic citizens to fight against the enemies of Islam and Iran"—the reference to Razmara was clear. On March 7, 1951, a Moslem fedayi assassinated Razmara. Wild rejoicing in the capital ensued. 14 Razmara's assassination and subsequent threats issued by the Moslem fedayis shook the court. In a missive directed to the "Son of Pahlavi," the fedayis demanded that the government free the assassin, praising him as a man who, "on the order of Islamic laws and God, has taken the rotten element from the path of Moslem progress and has inflicted the greatest defeats on the dirty policies of the foreign powers." Death was promised for all members of government, from the shah to members of the Majlis, if the young fedayi was not released with an apology. 15 The Islamic nationalist fervor that eventually erupted in the 1979 revolution was already a potent political force.

Mossadegh and the National Front: 1951-1953 In 1949, the National Front had been formed as a coalition of nationalist groups and parties from a broad spectrum of Iranian politics. When Razmara was assassinated, the National Front, under Mossadegh's leadership, was the clear successor to power. Its main goals, described by its first statutes in 1950, were the establishment of a strong, centralized nationalist government, free elections, and basic freedom of thought and action. 16 Its emergence in the summer of 1949 had been sparked by opposition to the supplementary agreement with the AIOC. By a "nationalist government," the front meant one that would control Iran's oil resources. Mossadegh saw negative equilibrium in foreign policy as a means of ensuring free elections in Iran; conversely, he saw free elections as a means of ensuring that negative equilibrium, once achieved, would continue. The AIOC had become a symbol of Iran's political and economic subordination to Britain, and the National Front was united primarily by opposition to this company; 17 its prevailing ideology was Mossadegh's doctrine of negative equilibrium in foreign affairs. 1 8 Aside from this common approach to foreign policy, the groups that composed the front had little in common, either in organization or in ideology. They came from both the traditional, religious bazaari middle class and the modem, secular middle class. This diversity of origins gave the groups in the National Front differences in political socialization that extended through all aspects of life. 19 The division between the traditional and modern classes could be observed throughout the political spectrum; right, left, and center. Kashani's Society of Moslem Warriors, composed mainly of young, lower-

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echelon bazaaris, represented the religious right. The charismatic Kashani gave the liberal nationalist Mossadegh a channel through which he could reach the masses. The Moslem Warriors demanded the implementation of the shari'a, the repeal of Reza Shah's secular laws, and the protection of national industries; the associated Feda'iyan-i Islam, not formally a member organization in the National Front, was more dogmatically fundamentalist. 20 The proto-Fascist National Party, founded by law student Dariush Foruhar, represented the secular side of the right of the National Front. The National Party proudly traced its origins to the Fascist movement of the 1930s and pressed irredentist claims encompassing Bahrein, Afghanistan, and the Caucasus. It attributed Iran's backwardness to religious minorities, especially Jews and Bahais, as well as to foreign powers. Foruhar became the first minister of labor after the Islamic Revolution. 21 The center of the National Front included both the Iran Party and the Merchant Association of the Bazaar. British officials described Allahyar Saleh, generally recognized as the leader of the Iran Party, as a "leftist" who had sympathized with the Azerbaijan revolution. He was second only to Mossadegh in popularity in the nationalist movement. Karim Sanjabi, a well-respected dean of the University of Tehran from Kurdistan, who had supported the Iran Party's alliance with the Tudeh, was another leading figure. He later became a focal point for Iranian liberal nationalism during the 1979 revolution. Many lowerand middle-ranking bazaaris and much of the religious hierarchy were associated with the center of the National Front through the Merchant Association and similar organizations. Hussein Makki, a young political historian from the Yazd bazaar with marital ties to a leading clerical family, belonged to this loose classification; also in this group were Mehdi Bazargan and Mahmoud (later Ayatollah) Taleqani, both later central figures in the Islamic Revolution. 22 On the left, there was the numerically weak Hizbeh Zahmatkeshane Mellat-i Iran, Toilers of the Iranian Nation Party. The ex-Tudeh member Khalil Maleki was the driving intellectual force behind the Toilers' Party. His influence brought in many students from the university in Tehran and gave the Toilers— unlike other groups in the National Front—their own coherent ideology and social program. 23 Maleki, who controlled the party's publications, continued criticizing the Tudeh's international approach to socialism, with its priority on Soviet as opposed to Iranian interests. 24 Jalal al-Ahmad, who had joined Maleki in his split with the Tudeh, was part of Maleki's "modem" wing. The bazaaris were represented in the Toilers' Party through its leader, the French-educated Muzaffar Baqai, who was a charismatic politician with strong support in his hometown of Kerman; his influence brought in many Kermanis and Kermani shopkeepers in Tehran. The Toilers' first proclamation stressed support for Kashani and Makki, bazaar favorites, as well as for Mossadegh. 25 Thus, the Toilers' Party, like other segments in the National Front, contained a mixture of elements in both traditional and modern middle classes. These elements split

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

apart in the turmoil of the Mossadegh era, Maleki eventually splitting from Baqai and taking his supporters with him. Other, less organized segments of the non-Communist left also joined the National Front, but the Tudeh at first spurned it. The Tudeh leaders' rivalry with Maleki made cooperation with the Toilers impossible. Indeed, the Tudeh was more likely to cooperate with Kashani's Moslem Warriors than with Maleki's group. 26 After its suppression, the Tudeh had abandoned its initial allegiance to constitutional principles and attempts to achieve reform through legal channels; it had become suspicious of reformers and underestimated the National Front's potential to become a true mass movement. 27 However, the National Front's rise made it easier for the Tudeh to create covering organizations and publish newspapers. National Front members, including Kashani and Shayegan, often signed the anti-imperialist petitions of these organizations 28 —groups that gave the Tudeh Party organizational experience that later proved extremely valuable in the July 21, 1952 uprising. In 1949, National Front street demonstrations persuaded the government to cancel the rigged elections in progress and conduct fresh ones. The new, relatively free elections resulted in a massive National Front victory in Tehran, where intense party agitation had heightened the population's political consciousness. In the provinces, people were still largely politically apathetic; provincial cities that were politically conscious, notably Tabriz, were alienated by Mossadegh's rejection of provincial autonomy. These factors, combined with army and landlord machinations, resulted in victory for procourt deputies in the provinces. Only eight of the 132 deputies in the Sixteenth Majlis, including Mossadegh, belonged to the National Front. The rest were an amorphous mixture of landed aristocrats and procourt politicians. These men, however, followed what Richard Cottam refers to as "their established pattern of bowing before overwhelming force." 2 9 The "overwhelming force" in this case was articulate public opinion, which soon lined up solidly behind Mossadegh. The AIOC's insistence on control of Iran's oil in the face of overwhelming demands for nationalization had raised nationalism to a fever pitch. Hence the deputies in the Sixteenth Majlis, many of whom privately opposed Mossadegh and nationalization, voted overwhelmingly for him as premier and unanimously for oil nationalization. On April 28, 1951, newly elected Prime Minister Mossadegh was charged with implementing the oil nationalization law he had sponsored. 30 His first government was composed primarily of figures who had served in previous cabinets, some of whom had vigorously opposed him in the past. The composition of this cabinet was an attempt to reassure the West and the court that Mossadegh was not a radical revolutionary. 31 The oil issue was the sole focus of activity during Mossadegh's first year in office, and this focus gave the National Front an illusory appearance of solidarity. The idea that Iran's relations with the Great Powers should be based

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185

on negative equilibrium, which in practice required a strong anti-British stance, was one all component groups in the National Front shared. Iran's relations with Great Britain, as might be expected, deteriorated markedly. British insistence on controlling the AIOC's management even after nationalization made negotiations almost impossible. Mossadegh astutely frustrated a probable British resort to force in Abadan by reminding Britain of the 1921 Irano-Soviet treaty. 32 His pursuit of negative equilibrium was, however, far from pro-Soviet: His government rejected an attempt to renew the Irano-Soviet fishery agreement in the Caspian. Relations between Iran and the Soviet Union remained correct but sometimes strained, as the Soviets suspected Mossadegh of having a strong pro-U.S. bias. 33 Mossadegh did attempt to obtain U.S. support for Iran's oil nationalization. Sanjabi explained to the author: "We thought that the international atmosphere was propitious, because of the Labour government in Britain and, more especially, the Truman government in Washington. We were hoping to use this atmosphere to facilitate the nationalization of the oil." 34 Under the Truman administration, the United States remained passive in the dispute between Iran and Britain; it did not give Iran the support that the National Front expected. The Tudeh interpreted Mossadegh's courtship of the United States and the continued flow of U.S. military aid to Iran as evidence that the National Front was pursuing a pro-U.S. third-power policy. Kianouri said, after the Islamic Revolution: "Dr. Mossadegh thought that America was not like England or France, since it lacked a colonial tradition." 35 Mossadegh's secular approach to negative equilibrium was counterbalanced by Kashani's more religious approach to the same goal. Kashani's foreign policy program, later a cornerstone of the Islamic Revolution, included the establishment of a "Moslem . . . bloc to serve as a balancing factor between the western and eastern blocs." 36 The court attempted to use the Mossadegh administration as a release valve for nationalist sentiment, but such feeling only grew under Mossadegh. The shah began to fear that the premier would use his popularity to dethrone him and establish a republic. Stormy relations ensued. In the elections for the Seventeenth Majlis, the liberal nationalist Mossadegh originally refused to manipulate the returns. The court had no such reservations; outside the capital the army and large landowners manipulated the elections in the court's favor. Tehran, where the National Front was strongest and court manipulation was ineffective, elected the entire slate of National Front candidates. In Azerbaijan, popular sentiment was genuinely against the National Front (because of its opposition to provincial autonomy); the front suffered a resounding defeat. As returns from Azerbaijan and army-manipulated areas began to come in, Mossadegh halted the elections. A bare quorum of seventy-nine deputies was seated; out of this quorum, the National Front had a small majority. About a third were opportunistic fence-sitters, and a dozen were staunch supporters of the shah. 37

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The events during the election for the Seventeenth Majlis convinced Mossadegh that his government's survival depended on control of the army. The premier demanded the right to appoint a trustworthy minister of war—for the present, himself. The shah refused, and in July 1952, Mossadegh resigned. The shah appointed Qavam premier. The British considered Qavam more flexible on the oil issue than was Mossadegh; his reiteration of the British assumption that the nationalization law was not an acceptable basis for a settlement with the AIOC confirmed this view. Qavam's apparent pro-British policy outraged Iranian public sentiments, which were resolutely anti-British. 38 Kashani, Qavam's personal enemy from the time of the Azerbaijan crisis, called for a popular uprising to oust him. Acording to Sanjabi, this call initiated the July 21 uprising. Major strikes broke out in Tehran and other large cities. The uprising became known as Qiyam-i Melliyeh Siyetir, the National Revolt of July 21. The charismatic Kashani was pivotal in returning Mossadegh to power, and many National Front groups, including the Toilers, participated in the street fighting. The Tudeh also provided invaluable support. The anti-Tudeh writer Fateh conceded that the Tudeh "played an important part—perhaps even the most important part" in the uprising. 39 The Tudeh's decision to support Mossadegh at this juncture, compared to its earlier (and later) ambivalence toward the National Front, can be understood only in light of its hostility toward Qavam. In the current spectrum of Iranian politics, Mossadegh clearly opposed the court and Britain. 40 In the joint action of Kashani's supporters with the Tudeh, the power of religion was evident, as was the Communists' organizational ability. The traditional and modem middle classes were still united in support of the liberal nationalist Mossadegh. Qavam requested dictatorial powers and control of the army to deal with the uprising. The shah, who may have feared Qavam as much as he feared Mossadegh, refused. Qavam resigned, and Mossadegh was reinstated. 41 With all the disturbances, the oil issue remained unresolved, and the government, as well as the country, was experiencing a serious monetary crisis. Since the government had to pay the oil workers and maintain the installations though no oil was being sold, Mossadegh attempted to create an "oil-less economy." In lieu of oil revenues, he encouraged internal self-sufficiency and agricultural exports. Imports and exports were balanced—partly a result of quotas on imports. The emphasis on the internal market lost Mossadegh the support of the comprador bourgeoisie; but the National Front retained the allegiance of the bazaaris, who were concerned primarily with internal trade to begin with and benefited from the trade balance achieved by the National Front government. 42 The internal reforms Mossadegh could accomplish without oil revenues were, of course, limited, but he attempted reforms in many areas. The peasants' share of the harvest was doubled, and uncompensated peasant labor for landlords prohibited. Mossadegh's secular advisors proposed extending the franchise to women. Kashani vehemently opposed both of these moves. 43

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Mossadegh's reformist efforts in administration were designed to prevent a repetition of his July 1952 ouster by the shah. In the judicial system, the military, and other branches of government, Mossadegh conducted a major purge of proshah and pro-British elements. He established a commission of eight men to oversee the shah's exercise of power, and he forced a new minister of court on the reluctant monarch. However, he steadfastly denied that he wished to establish a republic. 44 Mossadegh's purges and the reforms he launched made him many enemies. Ideological differences between the traditional and modem middle-class elements in the National Front coalition came to a head. Mossadegh's apparent move to the left and the Tudeh's renewed vigor under his premiership aroused bazaari suspicions that Mossadegh was pro-Communist. In light of the bazaar's economic gains under Mossadegh (see Table 9.1), bazaari fears were clearly based on political grounds. Kashani's close associate Shamseh Qonatabadi claimed that Mossadegh's purges had replaced good Moslems with "Kremlin-controlled atheists." Kashani drifted farther and farther from Mossadegh and, in February 1953, dropped out of the National Front coalition. According to Sanjabi, Kashani's defection "was the irreparable blow to the National Front. It deprived the National Front of support among the religious masses." 45 The bazaaris' beloved orator, Hussein Makki, also defected from the National Front. 46 Baqai, who had strong bazaari ties, had broken with Mossadegh in October 1952 and had expelled Maleki from the Toilers' Party for advocating Marxism. Maleki formed his own party, the Third Force, and persuaded many of the Toilers to join him in remaining in Mossadegh's government. While Kashani attacked the National Front for initiating reforms that threatened traditional Iranian society, the Tudeh criticized the very moderation of liberal nationalism's reforms. Tudeh newspapers called the National Front "an organization that is a social gathering of aristocratic personalities." Mossadegh's alliance with the dissident Communist Maleki only worsened the National Front's relations with the Communists; party organs accused the National Front of sharing Maleki's "bourgeois ideology." Tudeh leaders demanded a "class war" and railed against Mossadegh's toleration of the shah. The memory of Qavam's ill-fated 1946 alliance with the Tudeh still irked many party members, and the leaders were not about to repeat that mistake. 47 Mossadegh was legally entitled to suppress the Tudeh, which was still an illegal organization, but he did not. His cold relations with the court and the increasing defections within the National Front encouraged him to permit the Tudeh to continue functioning to counterbalance his internal enemies on the right. Once again, internal equilibrium was closely linked with external equilibrium: The Tudeh was aligned with the Soviet Union, while the court sided with the West. 48 Having lost his movement's initial political base, Mossadegh was increasingly forced to rely on autocratic measures. He dissolved the Senate and, in summer 1953, the Majlis itself, basing his authority on the will of the

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Table 9.1.

1950 1951 1952 1953

Iran's Exports and Imports, 1950-1953 Imports

Exports

6,243 7,011 5,031 5,324

3,494 4,319 5,750 8,318

Deficit/Surplus - 2,749 - 2,692 +• 719 + 2,994

Year is Iranian year, beginning in March; figures are in millions of rials. Source: Fateh, [Fifty Years of Iranian Oil), p. 644.

masses. These actions alienated conservatives: Jamal Imami, a staunch proBritish Majlis deputy, said, "He says he is 'going to appeal to the masses'. . . . He is leading the country toward anarchy." 49 Liberal leaders, including Sanjabi and Maleki, though still faithful political allies of the premier, also opposed his dissolution of the parliament. 50 In dissolving the Majlis, Mossadegh removed the only legal body between him and the shah. The shah capitalized on the resentment of displaced politicians, functionaries, and army officers in promoting an anti-Mossadegh coup. Mossadegh's diminished internal support made the coup possible. Sanjabi listed the internal contributing factors: T h e oil issue was not resolved, s o w e c o u l d e c o n o m i c reforms [that] Iran needed. There N a t i o n a l Front a f t e r the July u p r i s i n g . uncertainty w e r e o v e r w h e l m i n g ; and s o the enthusiasm for M o s s a d e g h . 5 1

not initiate the social and w a s dissension within the E c o n o m i c and p o l i t i c a l bazaar had lost its former

The U.S. view of Mossadegh had shifted when Eisenhower came to power. The Eisenhower administration considered the Tudeh's vigor evidence that Mossadegh's government was strengthening the Communist movement, and his refusal to enter into the Baghdad Pact contributed to the State Department's perception of Iran as anti-Western. In the global atmosphere of the time, this suggested Iran was pro-Soviet. Hence the new U.S. president coolly declined Mossadegh's May 1953 request for aid in marketing oil, 52 and Mossadegh lost his hope for U.S. support. Stalin's March 1953 death and the ensuing period of flux in Soviet foreign policy removed the Soviet Union as a counterbalance to a possible Western move against his government. 53 On August 19, 1953, Mossadegh, beleaguered by internal and foreign enemies, was overthrown in a coup d'état, a united effort of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the British intelligence service, the shah, and General Zahedi. The foreign intelligence services' involvement in Mossadegh's overthrow has been well documented. 54 When the United States finally helped mitigate Britain's economic stranglehold on Iran, it was not under the advantageous terms envisioned by Iranian nationalists of the Constitutional era.

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U.S. oil companies obtained a 40-percent share in the new oil consortium established by the post-coup government (see Table 9.2). The U.S. entry into Iranian politics forced Iran further into a one-sided, pro-Western policy. The Tudeh had failed to support Mossadegh; party leaders later explained their inaction by claiming that Iran, still in the anti-imperialist stage of political struggle, was not ready for a bourgeois-democratic revolution, so the Tudeh had been unable to obtain a mass base among the workers and peasants. Furthermore, the Tudeh added, the National Front had had an untrustworthy "bourgeois" leadership. This indicated the friction between Tudeh leaders and Mossadegh, evident in 1944-1946 in the oil crisis and the Azerbaijan affair. 55 Mossadegh's fall was caused by both external and internal factors: He had failed to understand the East-West polarization of world politics and so becamc a victim of his policy of negative equilibrium; he had lost the political base that might have kept him in power. As in the Gilan and Azerbaijan crises, oil was the major determining factor in Iran's foreign relations, and, once again, foreign relations were closely interwoven with the country's domestic politics. Again, too, an Iranian experiment in democracy failed, to be replaced by military dictatorship.

Military Rule: 1953-1959 After the August 1953 coup. General Zahedi was appointed premier. Most observers, in Iran and abroad, expected him to use his new position to exercise a military dictatorship. The shah, however, soon ousted Zahedi and took control. All the reforms of the Mossadegh era were reversed, including the peasants' increased share of the harvest. Most of the army and government officials purged by Mossadegh were returned to their posts; the legislation limiting the shah's powers was revoked; freedom of speech, assembly, and the press were sharply curtailed. The shah and General Teymour Bakhtiar, the military governor of Tehran, turned Iran into a police state. The Tudeh was the organization most victimized by the dictatorship; the party and its legal front organizations were suppressed, its leaders imprisoned or executed. Because of this repression, the party relied increasingly on its military network, which continued to expand. The network's charismatic revolutionary leader, Khosrow Ruzbeh, had already joined the executive committee during the Tudeh's Mossadegh-era move to the left. 56 Colonel Siamak, a member of the PCP military network even before the Tudeh's creation, assisted Ruzbeh in expanding it; but in summer 1954, the military network—swollen to some 600 officers in every echelon of Iran's armed forces—was uncovered by the government and destroyed. The loss was a near-fatal blow to the Tudeh. One after another, Bakhtiar's police discovered other Tudeh organizations and suppressed them. By 1955, the Tudeh was almost completely crushed as an

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Tabic 9.2. Shares in 1954 Oil Consortium

% Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Royal Dutch Shell French Oil Company U.S. Oil Companies: Standard Oil of California, Standard Oil of New Jersey, Texaco, and Socony Vacuum

40 14 6 40

Source: [Mossadegh's Speeches in the Sixteenth Parliament], pp. 11-12.

organized force. Siamak was executed in 1954; Khosrow Ruzbeh, after many escapes, was executed in 1958.57 After this disaster, the remaining Tudeh leaders, mostly abroad, reappraised their party's policy: In the Fourth Plenum of the Tudeh Central Committee, held in East Germany in July 1957, the party regretted its "failure to understand the nature of bourgeois nationalism and its anti-imperialist potential," which "led to the adoption of the wrong tactics in relation to the Mossadegh government." 5 8 The admission of "left sectarianism" was part of an overall reorientation in the international Communist movement toward the role of the bourgeoisie in national liberation movements. With the increasing emergence of independent or semi-independent Third World nations, this was a major problem in Soviet foreign policy and in local Communist parties' tactics. In 1956, the leading Soviet theoretician M. E. Zhukov informed the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union that "because the peasantry and the proletariat are weak, they are obliged to ally themselves with the national bourgeoisie." This was a return to the tactics advocated by the Seventh International, with emphasis on the Third World. 59 In 1959, a seminar on the national bourgeoisie and Third World liberation movements, held in Leipzig, underscored the importance of these issues. Here, Iranian delegates Kianouri and Iraj Iskandari described the Tudeh's Mossadegh-era "mistakes" as results of an "incorrect assessment of the role of the national bourgoisie." Kianouri wrote, "Despite their weak sides, the national bourgeoisie—on the whole an anti-imperialist and antifeudal force—can join the united anti imperialist front." 6 0 This optimistic appraisal of the possibility of a united front with bourgeois parties was appended with the usual Marxist cautions. Kambaksh wrote that, though it could fight imperialism and foreign reaction, "the national bourgeoisie also has a vacillating and compromising character, stemming from its . . . fear of losing its ownership and means of profit." 61 While the national bourgeoisie was identified as a potential ally more clearly than it had been in the past, this alliance remained a dilemma to the Communist movement.

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Although the Tudeh was the victim of the shah's bloodiest repression, the National Front was also suppressed. Most of its leaders were imprisoned, and Fatemi was executed. For years, the shah made no efforts to accommodate nationalist or democratic sentiments in his rule. In this atmosphere, the National Resistance Movement (NRM), a loose, clandestine coalition of former National Front members, emerged in late 1954. Taleqani, the popular preacher of the Hedayat Mosque in Tehran (itself a focus of political activity), and Bazargan, a devout Moslem popular with the bazaaris—both of whom had criticized Kashani for deserting Mossadegh—were central figures in this movement. Sanjabi, Bakhtiar, Maleki, and Foruhar also participated. The NRM, then, was divided between religious and secular nationalists. The religious figures—Bazargan and Taleqani—insisted on denouncing the regime as illegitimate, whereas the secular leaders—particularly Maleki— preferred to work openly through legal channels. As Sanjabi later noted, police repression made the latter approach unworkable, and the division between reformist secularists and revolutionary religious figures gave the public a more favorable impression of the latter. The ideological gap between religious and secular nationalists continued through the early stages of the Islamic Revolution; secular and religious trends coalesced around Ayatollah Mohammad Zanjani, a highly respected Azerbaijani cleric. It was difficult for the NRM to function under the shah's dictatorship; in 1956, almost all its leaders, including Zanjani, were arrested. National Front groups continued to exist: The Second National Front succeeded the NRM. Strife between religious and secular forces, between the traditional and modern middle classes, permeated the Second National Front as well. This lack of coherent ideology and organization prevented the National Front's successor organizations from exercising the political power the front had enjoyed under Mossadegh's charismatic leadership. Mossadegh himself did not help the situation: When leaders of the Second National Front formulated an ideology, organization, and program, he wrote to them, reprimanding them for attempting to become a party. 62 The shah's foreign policy was pro-Western. Iran joined the Baghdad Pact in 1955. Amini described the Central Treaty Organization (the Baghdad Pact's successor) as a repetition of the Sa'ad Abad Pact's attempt to encircle the Soviet Union. 63 The shah's rule, in a very literal sense, depended on his political and military ties with the United States. U.S. military aid permitted him to build up his police state and prevent opposition from gathering. Therefore, in Iranian eyes, the shah's dictatorship came to be identified with his pro-Western policy, an identification that later caused the leaders of the Islamic Revolution to target the United States as their principal enemy.

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The White Revolution: 1960-1963 The shah's dependence on the U.S. government forced him to pursue internal reforms between 1960 and 1963; the Kennedy administration insisted on social, economic, and political reforms. Influenced by the Cuban Revolution against the corrupt and dictatorial Batista regime, Kennedy and his advisors actively promoted political and economic reforms in many developing nations, in order to stem the tide of revolution. 64 Because of this U.S. pressure, the monarch pursued a more relaxed, liberal policy—at least temporarily—and initiated land reform. In 1960, the elections for the Twentieth Majlis resulted in a "participation explosion." These elections were originally a contest orchestrated between the two parties the shah had created, the Melliyun, Nationalist, Party and the Mardom, or People's Party. The shah hand-picked all candidates of both parties; 65 both parties freely admitted that they competed to please the shah. However, the 1960 elections turned out to be more interesting than expected. Under U.S. pressure, the shah allowed independent Sccond National Front candidates to enter the race. Amid widespread accusations of election fraud, Mohammad Reza stopped the elections and held new ones. In the second elections for the Twentieth Majlis, independent candidates again ran—and this time were permitted to win. The Tudeh, following its recently renewed united front policy, supported National Front candidates in the elections and sponsored a write-in campaign for Mossadegh, though he did not run.66 Allahyar Saleh of the Iran Party was elected, as was the Azerbaijani National Frontist, Mohghaddam Maraghayi. The shah appointed Sharif Imami prime minister. Imami was affiliated with no political party and had close ties to the religious establishment, but, because he did not implement any reforms, he failed to achieve either political popularity or U.S. support. In 1961, Ali Amini replaced Imami, at the urging of the Kennedy administration. 6 7 Amini's style of rule was reminiscent of his relation-bymarriage and political associate, Qavam. He opposed the shah and favored democratic reforms, but he was somewhat unscrupulous in the methods he chose to pursue his goals: He dissolved the Majlis and ruled by decree; he exiled General Bakhtiar, who had headed SAVAK (Sazmane Amniyat va Ettela'ate Keshvar, or Country's Organization of Security and Intelligence); he entrusted an anticorruption campaign to the justice ministry, which was given to a former Tudeh member. Amini appointed Hassan Arsanjani—a radical journalist, closely associated with Qavam, who had long advocated land reform—minister of agriculture. Arsanjani authored the most ambitious social reform the shah's government ever attempted: The 1962 Land Reform Act was designed to create a population of small landowners. Landlords were obliged to sell their holdings in excess of one village to the state, which was then to sell it to the peasants working on the land. 68

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The Amini government fell after fourteen months; he had clashed with the Second National Front because he had failed to hold free elections and had jailed many of its leaders. Also, he had clashed with the shah and the United States by insisting on cutting the military budget. The shah co-opted Amini's land reform, in a much-modified version, and incorporated it into his White Revolution. Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was as insistent as his father had been that all change emanate from himself. The modified land reform did not require sale of holdings in excess of the legal maximum; it permitted long-term tenancy and other options that tended to benefit the large landowners. Thus the revised land reform gave the sharecropping peasants a greater measure of security and turned them into small commercial farmers, but it did not create the mass of small proprietors Arsanjani had envisioned. 69 Land reform substantially altered the countryside's economy, greatly strengthening the "middle" peasantry. In the first years of the reform, some 9 percent of peasants became self-sufficient proprietors—a considerable increase. Peasants who received land after 1965 usually did not receive enough to support their families, however. Migrant peasants, about 40 percent of the peasant population, were completely neglected. The latter two groups were often forced to seek employment in the cities, where they formed a subproletariat highly receptive to religious propaganda. The clergy were hurt by the initial stages of land reform, when some waqf lands were confiscated, and their resentment against the government began a steady rise.70 Other facets of the White Revolution included the establishment of literacy and health corps, modeled after the U.S. Peace Corps: In place of military service, young educated Iranians were sent to the countryside to promote literacy and health. These organizations did have some impact on the countryside, though not to the extent the shah has claimed. The principal difficulty they faced was that not enough of the people drafted into these bodies were qualified to serve in the neglected rural regions; cultural and linguistic differences between provinces made the cadres' difficulties enormous. The government itself neglected to provide the villages with the technical aid they needed to improve their condition. 71 The White Revolution also extended the vote to women and initiated the sale of state factories to private entrepreneurs. The former move was purely symbolic, since in Iran it was rare for anybody to participate in an honest election. The latter, however, involved a number of wealthy plutocrats in the nation's industries. Whereas Reza Shah had concentrated all industry in his own or state hands, his son shared these resources with a wider, though still tightly limited, circle; Mohammad Reza increasingly depended on the aristocracy for support. 72 The National Front boycotted the shah's 1963 referendum for these reforms (in which a ludicrously high 99.9 percent of the returns favored them). The

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front's slogan was "Reforms Yes, Dictatorship No." 73 In contrast to the secular reformers' attitude of, at best, passive resistance to the shah's programs, religious leaders showed themselves willing to take radical action against the regime. The Freedom Movement, led by Bazargan and Taleqani, wanted to attack the regime, and Ayatollah Khomeini, Kashani's charismatic disciple, did precisely that. Unlike other mullahs, Khomeini did not attack land reform but instead focused on popular issues, including the regime's corruption and disregard for constitutional principles. In June 1963, Khomeini sparked riots in Iran's major cities, denouncing the shah's "mistakes." 74 The shah reasserted his control over the country and, with the help of the army, put down the uprisings. Khomeini was exiled, and royal dictatorship returned to "normal." The assassination of U.S. President Kennedy removed the principal foreign impetus to internal reforms that might have minimized Iran's potential for such antigovernment uprisings. The potential, clearly, was still there, despite government repression: In 1964, Prime Minister Hassan Mansur was assassinated by Moslem fedayis. Although the shah went back to dictatorship-as-usual after his brief flirtation with reform, those of 1962-1963 had a substantial impact on Iranian society. Land reform had particularly important consequences; besides inflaming the mullahs, it removed the landlord as an intermediary between the peasants and the state. The literacy and health corps, whatever their failings, furthered the contacts between the government and the rural population. However, the segment of the populace that had agitated most vigorously for reform—the articulate middle class—was denied the opportunity to participate in the political process. Mohammad Reza Shah, like his father, had enlarged the modem middle class through his policies. In the lower officer ranks of the army and in various bureaucratic posts, the middle class found a measure of prosperity, but the shah's regime did not provide the new bourgeoisie with institutions through which they could channel their political aspirations, nor was economic reform and development paralleled by any political reform or development. Various institutes and centers were founded, with U.S. assistance, to study various aspects of Iranian society. When legislation concerning internal problems was drafted, however, these institutes were not consulted; they were part of the shah's image of modernity, not part of an efficient government machinery. Rationalization remained superficial. No true differentiation of function developed among government institutions. The shah retained all power firmly in his grasp. 75 While the ruler allowed others to compete with him economically, there was to be no competition in the political field. The National Front, which enjoyed the support of an estimated 85-90 percent of the students at the University of Tehran, was suppressed. Political cynicism—the sense that the government was inherently unresponsive to any calls for change and would remain so—grew in Iran to such an extent that the modem middle class ceased to be an effective instrument for change. 76

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The shah's attempt to impose Western culture upon Iran without any of its political benefits created great resentment of the West. In reaction, a variety of anti-Western, antiregime trends arose. The most important of these trends, led by Ali Shariati, sought to use Islam as an ideological base to fight the regime. Shariati had been exposed to radical political philosophy while pursuing his doctorate in sociology in Paris in the early 1960s, where he had joined the Freedom Movement and the Iranian Student Confederation. When he returned to Iran in 1965, it was with the belief that Iran's cultural heritage—which he identified with Shi'i Islam—had to play a major role in Iran's challenge to the West. His lectures described Islam as a dynamic political ideology, the chief progressive force in society. Shariati criticized Marx's description of economics as the foundation of society; in his works, he described culture, particularly religion, as society's tnily formative force. Because of its materialistic roots and its dogmatic tendencies, modern Marxism had lost its revolutionary character, had become fossilized and bureaucratized into a "means to realize a bourgeois life for the proletariat," which Shariati rejected on moral grounds. 77 Just as he criticized the dogmatic nature of Marxism, with its intolerant claims to have the comprehensive ideology that could explain and solve all problems in every sphere of human life, so Shariati criticized the archaic, immobile positions of many modem Islamic leaders. He decried the religious hierarchy, saying that there was no need for intermediaries between humans and God, and that the reactionary mullahs had become a stumbling block to social progress. Shariati's lectures were taped and widely distributed. By the early 1970s, his views were extremely popular among younger intellectuals, especially at the universities. The closed political system and the failure of the National Front gave Shariati's teachings great attraction. Islam as a focus of resistance to the regime became popular, even among Iranians studying abroad. 78 Jalal al-Ahmad, the former editor of Nameh-i Mardom, attacked other Iranian intellectuals for their emphases on Westernization. In his famous book Garbzadegi (Intoxication with the West), he attributed Iran's political corruption and economic and social inertia to the West's cultural invasion. Al-Ahmad described cultural dependency on the West, which Iranian intellectuals only reinforced, as the greatest danger to Iran's cultural heritage. He advised Iran to become economically and culturally self-sufficient. Like Shariati, he criticized the religious leaders for not being sufficiently revolutionary and advised them to take an active role in leading Iran to a new era of independence. An individualist in the best Iranian tradition, al-Ahmad rejected political parties and unions as paths to dictatorship, corruption, and Western-oriented regimentation. His work clearly underlined the modern middle-class intelligentsia's loss of the leadership role it had enjoyed in the Mossadegh era, and his denunciation of Western influence, combined with Shariati's emphasis on Islam as a positive social force, became very popular among students. This combination would play a major role in the Islamic Revolution. 79

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Samad Behrangi, an Azeri elementary teacher and folk writer, wrote an attack on Iran's educational system, which he saw as an institution imitative of the West and unsuited for Iran. He advised the government to be more attentive to the importance of religion and culture among the peasants. Like many Azeris before him, he also disapproved of governmental attempts to force Farsi on Azerbaijani elementary students. He saw the central government's Persian chauvinism as a barrier to national unity. Like al-Ahmad and Shariati, Behrangi was frustrated with the closed political system. 8 0 Others sought the solution to Iran's cultural and political dependency on the West in radical Communist ideology. T h e writer, poet, and orator Khosrow Golesorkhi, in Siyasati Honar (The Politics of Art), described current Iranian culture as a "bourgeois-dependent" tool of Western expansion. Art and culture, he felt, should be part of the social struggle against the shah's dictatorship. 81 These anti-Western tendencies had an enormous impact on the Islamic Revolution. The strength of anti-Western sentiments, and the appreciation for Islam's role in Iran, is evident in all of the above writers. Even the manifestly Communist Golesorkhi, in his 1973 trial for involvement in an attempt on the shah's life, conceded the importance of "the Islam of Ali" as a social force to fight oppression. 8 2 In the post-Azerbaijan epoch, the links between Iran's foreign and internal policies remained pronounced. Changes of government in the United States prompted massive internal changes in Iran. In the Mossadegh era and after, the middle classes, rent by internal tensions, failed (as they had in the periods immediately after the two world wars) to limit the royal dictatorship or to establish negative equilibrium in foreign policy. The result of these failures was the simultaneous growth of antishah and anti-Western sentiment. Since Mossadegh's liberal nationalism had not succeeded in the struggle against the shah and Western domination, religious nationalism grew in strength. The seeds of the Islamic Revolution were in evidence; the monarchy would pay dearly for its intransigent refusal to share power with the middle class.

10 Imperial Dictatorship

In many aspects, Iran is much more democratic than Europe. . . . [T]he opposition is so negligible that it cannot get even one seat in Parliament. — M . R. Pahlavi ( 1 9 7 3 interview with Oriana Fallacci)

This chapter will examine the shah's consolidation of power, the economic boom and bust that preceded the Islamic Revolution, and the leftist groups that rose up, eventually to take part in the revolution. This attempt at an overview cannot pretend to describe or analyze exhaustively the history of this period.

Imperial Consolidation: 1963-1973 After the ouster of the Amini government in 1963, the shah employed three main means to consolidate his power: (1) the military, SAVAK, and other agents of forcible repression; (2) economic controls as tools to buy political loyalty; (3) political controls, including the state bureaucracy. The military means of repression at the shah's command were impressive: The regular army more than doubled in size between 1963 and 1977, and the shah used it as a symbol of prestige and national integration, as well as of coercion. SAVAK continued to grow in size and power as a clandestine internal police force; between 1973 and 1978, $2,650 million was spent on SAVAK. Following the containment doctrine enunciated in the wake of the Azerbaijan affair, the United States increasingly assisted both forces. SAVAK was particularly hated and feared, as it was used to terrorize any potential opponents to the monarchy or the monarch. 1 However, the shah's mistrust was so deep that he was unwilling to rely on the loyalty of either force. Fearing the potential power either might wield if it could be turned against him, he created the Imperial Inspectorate and the J2 Bureau, to spy on the army, SAVAK, and each other. As added insurance, no branch of the armed forces was permitted to contact another—even to 197

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coordinate routine military maneuvers—except through the shah's military office. This system of checks and balances among rival power groups was a traditional feature of Iranian monarchy from Qajar times and before. 2 The shah did not rely solely on the threat of punishment to secure loyalty to his regime. He also used his government's extensive economic network to associate Iranians, even in distant villages, with the state; and he attempted to acquire loyalty by giving job security and financial rewards to some in the upper and middle classes. Land reform had brought the state into peasant life to an unprecedented degree. Local magnates no longer acted as buffers between the state and the rural population. Other government initiatives in the countryside, including education and the construction of roads and dams, were undertaken in an effort to integrate the peasants into the nation and, of course, to win their loyalty to the regime. By 1975, an anthropologist in a remote region of the country commented that "the government now interferes in practically all aspects of daily life." 3 In its rural endeavors, the shah's government attempted to forge an alliance with the peasantry in order to preserve the traditional patrimonial system against potential opposition from the modem middle class. 4 The imperial government's entrance into the rural economy also led to greater centralization, which, in turn, facilitated control of the provinces. In urban areas, too, the shah used his economic control to increase his political power. The state's immense economic role gave the monarch obvious control mechanisms. By 1977, Iran's salaried middle class was estimated at 630,000, of whom 304,404 were civil servants, and 208,241 were teachers or school administrators; thus the vast majority owed their livelihood to the state. 5 The government awarded family members and faithful followers with development initiatives. The Shah's absolute power in such matters encouraged loyally among the candidates for such awards. The most conspicuous organ of court patronage was the Pahlavi Foundation. Controlled and theoretically financed by the shah, in fact much of the foundation's financial resources came from the state. It was involved in many investments the shah considered desirable for the country's economic development, including cement plants and agribusiness. It was a principal source of salaries, pensions, and sinecures to the shah's followers. The foundation financed the education of 12,000 students abroad over a period of nineteen years and sponsored a variety of youth, health, literacy, and pension programs. These "charitable" undertakings were, in large part, attempts to purchase the population's loyalty. One branch of the foundation published textbooks, which, not surprisingly, portrayed the regime in rather glowing terms. 6 In conjunction with military and economic control mechanisms, the shah also kept a tight rein on the country's political institutions. Throughout this period, Amir Abbas Hoveyda, a graduate of a French university, was prime minister, his only function to inteipret royal decrees. Government ministries and agencies had no independence of action. The shah continued to rely on a system

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of patrimonial rule that derived power directly from the throne and closely guarded the key juncture points between civil and military sectors. The prime minister and the minister of the interior, who in theory could command the gendarme and police forces for internal security, in actual fact had no control over them. The monarch appointed every provincial and major city police and gendarme chief, who reported, not to the premier or interior minister, but directly to the shah. All who seemed to be building their own power base— however loyal they might appear—were promptly removed from their positions. As a further precaution against those who might regard themselves as indispensable, "shadow cabinets" duplicated the functions of the ministries. 7 The expansion of the state bureaucracy and proliferation of bureaucratic units reflected, not Weberian specialization, but imperial power.

Economic Boom and Bust: 1973-1977 Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Iran's modernization program proceeded at a steady pace. In 1973, however, the energy crisis in the Western world, initiatied by the Arab-Israeli War, drastically increased oil revenues, enabling the shah to plunge Iran into an era of unprecedented growth. The fifth Five Year Development Plan was revised in mid-course as oil revenues suddenly quintupled from 1973/74 to 1974/75. 8 The shah planned to use the high price of oil to make Iran a major industrial and military power, often referring to his desire to establish a "great civilization." This would serve to legitimize his own rule, which, like his father's, was plagued by insecurity. The emphasis of the revised fifth plan was, of course, on industry, and the larger the project concerned, the more likely the government was to sponsor it. Iran began importing massive quantities of construction supplies and consumer goods from the West. The economic infrastructure, though considerably expanded during the previous decade, was unable to cope with this import binge. By mid-1975, ships had to wait 160 days to unload their goods—and when goods were unloaded, there was nowhere to warehouse them. Government planning programs and credit allocations favored major industrial projects, which, all too often, were designed to foster Iran's international prestige rather than economic independence or cost-effectiveness. Automobile and tractor factories were established, but the vital parts (e.g., engines) were imported from abroad; assembling them in Iran was more costly than importing the finished product. Oil-derived subsidies permitted many areas of the economy to remain inefficient, unproductive, and dependent on the West. 9 The government consistently supported such prestige-conscious large-scale undertakings, denying financial support to smaller endeavors. Small-scale enterprises, often centered on the bazaar, received no government credit, turning instead to the bazaar's traditional lending institutions. Perhaps because the bazaar had this financial

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power, government planning singled out the traditional sector of the economy as one that had to be eliminated so that progress could be made. U.S.-style supermarkets were built, threatening the bazaari shopkeepers' livelihoods. The shah wanted to reduce the bazaaris' political and economic power by eliminating their role as distributors, and the imperial government's oil wealth made a state monopoly over the internal economy seem possible. 10 In absolute terms, the bazaaris actually profited from the oil boom, but the new government banks and retail systems demoted their relative position in Iran's economy. As a result, the bazaaris felt themselves increasingly under seige.11 The boom also affected the agricultural sector, targeting the countryside for modernization. The shah's land reform had swelled the ranks of the middle peasants, while dispossessing those who were poorer. In Kurdistan, for example, the percentage of middle peasants (with one to three hectares) grew from 3 percent in 1960 to 32 percent in 1975. Since land reform, the rural economy was almost completely monetarized. 12 Those who received small landholdings, insufficient to support their families, soon lost their land because they were unable to keep up the payments to the government. Rural cooperatives, designed to help the peasants meet their obligations, often existed only on paper. 13 Because smallholdings were inefficient, the government made concerted efforts, beginning in the late 1960s, to consolidate them into farm corporations—in which the peasants had shares—and foreign-owned agribusinesses. These two types of institutions, which dispossessed great numbers of peasants, were designed as gigantic agricultural projects, analogous to the shah's industrial efforts during the boom. They were too large for maximum efficiency and suffered from a lack of planning (in crop choices and budget forecasts) and skilled management, the same woes that plagued the industrial sector. Agricultural production did steadily increase, but it did not keep pace with Iran's 3-percent annual population growth. During the boom years, Iran became dependent on food imports. 14 A lack of coordination between producers and distributors (the result of centralization of the economy, the corrupted bureaucracy, and the continued lack of proper roads and warehouses in rural areas) prevented the peasants from profiting from their production. The gap between rural and urban Iran continued widening. The government treated the industrial and agricultural sectors of the economy as two separate entities; of the two, industry was favored, since it contributed to the shah's image of national prestige. Despite improved roads and communications, many rural areas remained fragmented and isolated. Country-dwellers' lower income did not permit them to buy the products produced in the urban areas; the underproductive rural economy, in turn, did not provide the industrial sector with the support it needed. The centralization of the economy, and of the governmental and physical facilities that made manufacturing possible, prevented industry from penetrating the countryside. 1 5 Multinational corporations remained in or near the cities (especially Tehran). Like his father,

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Mohammad Reza Shah had caused wealth and population to center on the capital. By 1979, Tehran had 14 percent of the national population, and virtually all of the political elite was located there. 16 The higher standard of living in the cities, especially during the boom years, exerted a magnetic attraction, drawing peasants to urban areas at the rate of 250,000 a year. The 1963 land reform seems to have been analogous to the English enclosure movement in freeing peasants to respond to this urban pull. Poor, unskilled, landless peasants were attracted by the massive urban construction projects. The poorer minority groups—Kurds, Baluchis, Turks, and Arabs—were particularly drawn to the expanding provincial cities. 17 The shah's foreign and military policies in the 1970s complemented his economic programs. In his relations with other states, in the mushrooming of the military forces in this period, and in the traditional nationalism he promoted, the clear goal was to win prestige by making Iran a regional, and even global, power. The shah's desire dovetailed with U.S. foreign policy. In the postVietnam era, President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger formulated what has been described as the "Nixon doctrine" to prevent direct U.S. involvement in "future conflicts which are peripheral to the central interests of the great powers." 18 To this end, the United States sought to strengthen smaller allies' defenses, so they would remain pro-Western but would not have to rely on U.S. troops. The Nixon doctrine was a restatement of the containment policy, with greater emphasis on regional security. The shah was perfectly willing to serve as a regional policeman in the Persian Gulf. During the 1960s, he had preserved a measure of equilibrium among the Great Powers by signing a great number of trade agreements with the USSR and other Eastern bloc countries. 1 9 During the 1970s, however, this limited equilibrium was rapidly replaced by a one-sided policy favoring the United States and other Western nations. In 1971, the shah sent troops against the Marxist uprising in Oman, on the side of the ultraconservative sultan, and throughout the decade, he mounted armaments against neighboring Iraq, whose Ba'athist government U.S. statesmen considered to be pro-Soviet. The shah's weapons purchases (see Table 10.1 and accompanying graph) escalated drastically with the oil boom, and the United States was the major supplier. From 1972 through 1976, Iran bought $10 billion worth of U.S. arms, including sophisticated weapons and surveillance devices far in excess of Iran's needs or the capabilities of Iranian technicians. The shah's shopping list in the boom years included 28 Hovercrafts, 760 Chieftain tanks, 400 M47 tanks, 460 M60 tanks, and 190 Phantom fighters, as well as a Spruance naval destroyer and a sophisticated radar system. The government also purchased a 25percent share of Krupp armaments in Germany and began construction on the Chahbahar naval base, which was to be the largest on the Indian Ocean. The shah's projections for the future development of the armed forces called for still greater expenditures. His ambitions for regional military hegemony were

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Table 10.1. Iran's Economy, 1970-1978 1970

1971

1972

1973

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

GNP

732

923

1179

1728

3079

3497

4692

5483

4918

Government revenues

171

257

259

465

1394

1582

1836

2034

1599

84

150

179

311

1205

1247

1422

1498

1013

*

*

135

373

476

567

Petroleum revenues Military expenditures

*

*

590

Compiled from information provided to the author by Bank-i Merkaziye Iran (Central Bank of Iran), Department of Economic Research; and from Adibi, [The New Middle Class in Iran], p. 112. Figures are rounded, in billions of rials (there were approximately 67.5 rials to the dollar in this period); the GNP is adjusted for market value. * Figures not available.

Data in Table 10.1 graphically depicted. 1570

1 5 7 1 , 1 3 7 2 1573 1574 1575, 1376

1371

Note: Years are Iranian fiscal years, which start in March. Data from the Central Bank of Iran. c23 — G N P

- g o v e r n m e n t revenues

¿•tf =

petroleum revenues

military expenditures (? - not available for these years)

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immense, but while he clearly had more armaments than were necessary for Iran's defense, it was unlikely that his army could survive a confrontation with the Soviet Union, as the shah believed. 20 The imperial government's ambition for prestige in the international community was not confined to the military realm. During the boom years, oil revenues also financed massive foreign loans: In 1974, Iran gave out $9 billion in loans and assistance. The shah's financial aid was primarily directed toward the West, the region he was trying hardest to impress; it included several billions to Britain and France. 21 Some of these financial programs were attempts to win regional allies. For example, Iran loaned Egypt $1 billion to rebuild Port Said and signed a loan agreement with Afghanistan to finance the construction of a railroad from the Iranian border to Peshawar. The government made substantial investments in raw materials in India and Pakistan, as well as Egypt. 22 These initiatives were intended to increase Iran's political influence and reduce Soviet influence in these countries. With the financial resources his father had lacked, the second Pahlavi monarch was able to pursue the status of a regional and global power. The shah's increasing militarism abroad was accompanied by increasing political repression within Iran. The imperial repression employed the same nationalistic slogans as did the international ventures. In 1975, the shah announced the formation of the Rastakhiz or Renaissance Party, intended henceforth to be the sole legal political organization in the country. On the day the new party was announced, the shah told the nation that all loyal Iranians were expected to join, and that those who did not wish to join were Tudeh sympathizers who would be provided with passports to leave. 23 Rastakhiz was somewhat successful in implementing government policy: It intensified state control over the salaried middle class, urban working class, and the rural masses; and strengthened the government's censorship apparatus— within a year, the number of titles published in Iran was reduced by two-thirds. More ominously, Rastakhiz joined the imperial government's onslaught against the bazaar, further unsettling the already besieged bazaaris.24 The party completely failed, however, to serve as a two-way communications channel between the public and the monarch. Since the shah, like his father, viewed mass participation as a threat to his rule, he soon took steps to curb even the symbolic participation involved in Rastakhiz. By mid-1976, he had expressly forbidden internal party debate, which made communications impossible, and in late 1977, when Mohammad Baheri, the party's secretary-general (previously well-trusted by the shah), made a statement implicitly criticizing the government's housing policy, he was abruptly dismissed. Furthermore, the Rastakhiz leadership was confined to the same narrow circle of elite bureaucrats who had dominated Iran's government for the past decade: The party did not permit circulation of elites any more than it did circulation of ideas. 25 The shah's attempts at development permitted no mass political participation, even at a symbolic level. Rastakhiz

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

was forced to remain an appendage of the executive branch, but, in emasculating the party, the shah destroyed the only institutional base that could have been used to channel popular demands for reform within the monarchical framework. 26 Ironically, he had cleared the path for the Islamic Revolution. By late 1975, clashes with the Saudis over the price of oil made the future of oil revenues—the cornerstone of all the Shah's development programs— uncertain. Oil revenues dropped from $21.8 billion in 1976/77 to $21.3 billion in 1977/78, and it became clear that no further price increases could be expected in the near future. Inflation, which had dropped from an early high at the beginning of the boom in 1975 to 9.9%, skyrocketed to 16.6% in 1976 and to 25.1% in 1977. In late 1976, the government's expenditures overtook its revenues, and the shah made public statements regretting his previous haste in spending the oil revenues. In October, he publicly denounced the post-1973 euphoria: "Things will now change," he said sternly. "Everyone should work harder and be prepared for sacrifices in the service of the nation's progress"; 27 but the ambitious military and foreign policy endeavors, naturally, did not suffer "sacrifices." The atmosphere of relentless economic progress had been replaced by one of uncertainty; the rising expectations of the boom years, already coupled with growing political frustration, suddenly dampened.

Crescendo of Opposition: 1977-1979 The class structure created during the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah, especially during the boom years of the mid-1970s, was the source of the intense political and economic friction that came to a head during the 1979 revolution. Economic policies resulted in a massive influx to the cities: Whereas in 1956, 56 percent of Iranians were employed in agriculture, by 1976, only 33 percent were so employed. Those whose lands had been expropriated by reforms were often integrated into the urban upper or upper-middle classes through investing their newly gained liquid assets in urban ventures, while peasants, deprived of their agricultural livelihood by land reform's aftereffects, were generally integrated into the lower and lower-middle classes. 28 The gap between city and country grew—a gap as much cultural as economic: Newspapers, for example, were distributed almost entirely in the urban areas; whereas in 1973, 90 percent of urban school-aged children were enrolled in schools, only 39 percent of their rural counterparts attended classes, and those rural children who did receive a primary education often used it to enter the ranks of the urban lower-middle classes, so the countryside did not benefit from their education. 29 Migration to the cities made them increasingly the undisputed centers of the country's political life; the urban population became the driving force in the Islamic Revolution. The upper class was a closed group of some 1,000 individuals, including the Pahlavi family (estimated to be worth $25 billion in 1979), enterprising

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aristocrats who had profited from urban undertakings since land reform, elder statesmen, and high-ranking military officers; membership was a function of income and social origins. The exceptions—half a dozen new entrepreneurs who were considered members of the upper class—proved the rule: They had prospered primarily because of their connections with the royal family and other members of the old upper class. 30 Most members of the modem, salaried middle class were employed in the burgeoning state bureaucracy. The shah had encouraged apolitical behavior among its members and had strongly discouraged them from communicating with the urban masses. 31 Because of this, and the earlier failure of the National Front, this group had lost its credibility as a viable opposition force. Further, it was increasingly polarized into upper- and lower-middle classes. The upper-middle class was defined, not by superior education, but by higher incomes and close social and political ties to the regime. While upper-middle-class salaries were usually considerably larger than those of the lower-middle class, it did not depend on salary alone; the upper-middle class also had investments, state pensions, and family assets. With the upper class, the upper-middle salaried class was part of the wealthiest 10 percent of Iran's population and accounted for 40 percent of the national consumption. 32 This small fraction of the middle class was, like the upper class, a closed elite circle, highly dependent on the regime for survival and concerned primarily with preserving its economic and social position. It was very conservative, when it was not totally politically apathetic. The much larger lower-middle class also worked primarily in the state bureaucracy. Its members, however, usually had lower-paying jobs in the state machinery, most often in the Ministry of Education. The armed forces also followed this pattern: Air force technicians were drawn from the lower-middle class and were prevented from enjoying officer status, whereas the high-ranking officers of the privileged Imperial Guard, who were drawn from the wellconnected upper-middle class, enjoyed salaries on the scale of the rest of the upper-middle class. Private business followed the same pattern of polarization between upper- and lower-middle classes; the salary gap between upper and lower management positions was immense. The members of this urban petty bourgeoisie usually sprang from traditional origins (either from the countryside or from the bazaar). But, no matter how much education they had, the increasingly "closed," stratified nature of the class system thwarted their entry into the upper-middle class. The polarization between the upper- and lowermiddle classes extended to urban geography. The petty bourgeoisie lived in different neighborhoods than their wealthier counterparts and could not afford the lifestyle of the latter. Hence they retained close ties to the bazaari middle class, especially to the bazaar's religious establishment. 33 The bazaaris themselves— the traditional middle class—were increasingly fearful of the government's antibazaar campaign. This fear was combined with resentment of the extravagant lifestyles the upper and upper-middle classes enjoyed as a result of the oil boom.

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

One shopkeeper complained that the shah and the "oil bourgeoisie" wanted to "throttle" the bazaar. 34 The clergy, always closely tied to the bazaar, also feared the government. The shah had given them reason for concern throughout his reign; from the Thirteenth through the Twentieth Majlis only 4 percent of the deputies were clergymen, down from 12 percent under Reza Shah and 24 percent under the Qajars. In the Twenty-first Majlis, the number dropped still farther, to a mere 1 percent. The shah's 1975 decision to replace the traditional Iranian Islamic calendar with one dating from Cyrus the Great was clearly an attempt to attain political legitimacy for the monarchy at the clergy's expense; so, for that matter, was the Rastakhiz Party. Land reform and the ulama's growing dependence on the state as a source of revenue sharply limited the clergy's financial independence. In 1977, the government drastically cut its subsidies to the ulama, abhorrence of the Shah's government and all its administrative branches waxed. From his place of exile in Iraq, Khomeini advised all true believers to avoid the Rastakhiz Party. 35 The urban lower class was composed of laborers in various unskilled and low-skilled professions. This class had swelled considerably in the boom years. The newer members of the urban proletariat and subproletariat had come from the countryside and were still highly susceptible to religious propaganda. From mid-1977 on, the economic crunch that developed as the shah tightened up the pursestrings on civilian construction projects left many of these unskilled, exrural workers unemployed. In 1976, Iran's unemployment rose to 9.69 percent. Wrote Robert Graham, a U.S. journalist, "It was this confused, bitter new urban proletariat which imbibed quickest the protest messages coming from the mosques. They had nothing to lose and everything to gain." 36 Thus, the classes most frustrated by the shah's political constraints, and the closed nature of the socioeconomic system, were the clergy and the urban poor, the modem lower bourgeoisie, and, closely tied to them, the traditional middle class of the bazaars. These groups formed an explosive and potent partnership.37

The Oppositional Organizations There was a variety of groups with the potential to resist the monarchical dictatorship; the first among them was the Tudeh, which, during the 1960s, had suffered a marked decline in membership and activities. Besides the difficulties created by police repression and the weakening of its leadership through death and old age, the shah's modernization program had hampered the Tudeh's recruitment of young intellectuals. The expansion of the educational system had brought members of the traditional middle class into the intelligentsia; these new intellectuals were highly religious and, therefore, anti-Tudeh. 38 The Tudeh had also suffered from a number of splits during the 1960s. The

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KDP, which had become a provincial branch of the Tudeh after the fall of the Kurdish Republic in 1946, split from the party in the 1950s, criticizing it for its failure to pursue armed struggle as well as its neglect of the "nationality question." Whereas the old KDP had been confined to northern, Sunni Kurdistan, the new KDP was active in southern, Shi'ite Kurdish cities such as Kermanshah. Almost all of the new KDP's leaders, including Abdulrahman Ghassemlou, were from the cities and conceived of a Kurdish nation that transcended tribal and religious barriers. The KDP's analysis of Kurdish society was increasingly Marxist. 39 During the Islamic Revolution, the KDP resurfaced as a Kurdish nationalist organization opposed to the Islamic Republic. Its program retained national autonomy, rather than social revolution, as its main focus; the KDP was (and still is) often embroiled in active combat with the rival Komoleh, a non-Tudeh Communist group in Kurdistan that advocates class struggle. 40 The other two splits that had divided the Tudeh during the 1960s revolved around the Sino-Soviet rift. In 1965, Ghassemi and Ghulam Hussein Forutan, leading members of the central committee, left the Tudeh to form Tufan (Storm). They denounced both the Tudeh—for blindly following the Soviet lead and ignoring Maoist China—and Soviet "revisionism" under Khrushchev, especially denunciations of Stalin. Tufan believed that the Tudeh had strayed from its original revolutionary nature, and that the party should be revived by purging reformist leaders. Simultaneously, Fereydoun Keshavarz, a younger member of the central committee, founded the Sazmane Enghelabiye Hizbeh Tudehye Iran— the Revolutionary Organization of the Tudeh Party of Iran—composed from elements of the Tudeh youth section. Like Tufan, the Revolutionary Organization was avowedly Maoist and favored armed struggle, especially in the rural areas. The Revolutionary Organization attempted to pursue guerrilla warfare in Kurdistan. Believing that Iran was, like pre-Maoist China, a "semifeudal, semicolonial" society, it saw overthrowing feudalism as its main goal. 41 It was soon split by internal factions, one of which advocated following the Cuban, rather than the Chinese, pattern of revolution. In addition to this internal strife, the organization was infiltrated and suppressed by SAVAK. Unlike Tufan, the Revolutionary Organization regarded the Tudeh as unworthy of revival; no alliance between the two new parties was possible. 42 Both Tufan and the Revolutionary Organization lost their popularity when China established diplomatic relations with the shah's government. The abortive nature of the "armed struggle" these groups advocated also disillusioned many militants. During the Islamic Revolution, Tufan reemerged very briefly but emphasized political education instead of armed struggle. The Revolutionary Organization never resurfaced, though many of its members influenced other organizations. 43 In the 1970s, the Tudeh regained much of the ground lost during the schismatic 1960s; the strength of religion as a focus of possible political force

208

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

to fight the shah became clear, even to the Tudeh. Tabari wrote, "We accept militant religion as a force to fight against oppression and injustice; we do not accept it as a force that teaches ignorance, passivity, mysticism, and self-pity." 44 Also contributing to its new strength was the fact that the ADP had rejoined the party in 1960, with ADP chairman Daneshyan even joining the central committee in exile. A 1960 Tudeh proclamation had recognized the rights of "nationalities" for the first time and had authorized the ADP to publish in Azeri. Although the ADP had preserved its organizational independence, its becoming the Tudeh's branch in Azerbaijan had contributed significantly to the Tudeh's strength. The Tudeh and the ADP remain allied up to this writing. 45 A non-Tudeh Marxist organization callcd Sazmane Cherikhaye Fedayiye Khalge Iran—the People's Fedayin Guerrilla Organization of Iran (PFGO)— surfaced in the early 1970s, a merger of two revolutionary study groups. The more secular, Bijan lazani's group, was composed largely of former members of Tudeh youth organizations; the other, more religious group, led by Massoud Ahmadzadeh and Amir Parviz Pouyan, was composed largely of former members of National Front youth organizations. While a student at the University of Tehran in the relatively liberal years between 1960 and 1963, Jazani had participated in the revived National Front organizations. The study group he founded during these years moved increasingly toward armed struggle under the police repression of the shah. After Jazani was arrested in 1968, his group continued under the leadership of his close associate, Hamid Ashraf. 4 6 Ahmadzadeh, whose father was a member of Bazargan's Freedom Movement, came from a religious family in Mashad; Pouyan was a graduate of the school of medicine in Mashad University. The intensity of police repression prodded the Ahmadzadeh-Pouyan group, initially devoted to studying Marxism, to advocate armed resistance. While the members of this group were more religious in social background (and often in daily practice) than the Jazani group, they were more radical in their program of action.47 In March 1971, the two groups merged, forming the PFGO, which (particularly the Ahmadzadeh-Pouyan faction) criticized the Tudeh for abandoning armed struggle in favor of "survival" and the strategic interests of the Soviet Union; "Every line that would aim at mere survival of the MarxistLeninist groups and organizations and pays no revolutionary attention to their growth," wrote Pouyan, "is an opportunistic and defeatist line." 48 The Soviet Union, according to Ahmadzadeh, was revisionist in its internal policy and reactionary in its foreign policy. Jazani, as an ex-Tudeh member, conceded the former point but insisted that the Soviet Union's foreign policy was not reactionary. 49 The Tudeh retorted by characterizing the PFGO as "adventurist," comparing its policies with Bakunin's "Propaganda by the Deed." 50 The PFGO also criticized the Tudeh and the National Front for their policies toward the minorities, simultaneously criticizing the ADP for its provincialism. Ali Reza Nabdel, an Azerbaijani intellectual and friend of Samad

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Behrangi, headed the PFGO's organization in Azerbaijan. He attacked Persian chauvinism, described provincial nationalism as "bourgeois nationalism" that rejected class struggle, and noted that oppression in Kurdistan—where Kurds were treated as foreigners because of their religious and tribal distinctness—was severe. 51 The PFGO analyzed land reform as having changed Iran from a feudal to a dependent-bourgeois society. The bourgeoisie's dependency implied that the next revolution would be, not a bourgeois-democratic revolution, but a people's democratic revolution leading directly to s o c i a l i s m . 5 2 While repeating Golesorkhi's criticism of the West and Iran's economic and cultural dependence on it, the PFGO also criticized Iran's native culture. Ali Akbar Safai Farahani, a m e m b e r of Jazani's group, wrote: "We should not let our struggle with imperialism m a k e us take asylum with the reactionary, conservative, and decadent culture of Iranian society, because this will be a regression in history." 5 3 As might be gathered, the PFGO distrusted the traditional elements in society; bazaaris and clerical figures were not among its cadres in the period before the Islamic Revolution. 5 4 The Ahmadzadeh-Pouyan group's faith that "revolutionary power"—that is, armed uprising—would convert the masses was so strong that Ahmadzadeh opposed creating any political party before the rebellion, which would, of itself, lead to the "objective conditions" wherein a workers' party would be created, and there would be "revolution within revolution." 55 Ashraf described the decision to take up arms: [W]e came to the practical conclusion that in the beginning of our action police repression prevented us from having a large organization. Therefore we accepted the principle of working in small cells. The aim of these groups was to strike at the enemy in order to destroy this atmosphere of repression and prove to the masses that the only way of struggle is armed uprising. 5 6

Thus, the Jazani group abandoned its emphasis on organizational preparation, at least for the time being, in favor of "guerrilla warfare, and more guerrilla warfare." After debating whether the countryside or the urban areas would be the best focus of guerrilla activity, the PFGO resolved to pursue both simultaneously. The Ahmadzadeh-Pouyan group took the cities, and the Ashraf group, calling itself Jangal, the rural areas. Like the Democratic Party of the Constitutional era, the PFGO established its first four branches in Tehran, Mashad, Tabriz, and Rasht. 5 7 Guerrilla operations began in the north. Initial actions in Khorasan failed because of the strength of religion in that highly conservative province; a local mullah prevented the peasants from joining the revolutionaries. 5 8 In 1971, the capture of a fedayi in the Mazandaran gendarmes' outpost at Siahkal led to a PFGO attack, which became known as Rastakhiz-i Siahkal, or the Resurgence of Siahkal. T h e rural population was notably unresponsive to the guerrillas.

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

preferring to cooperate with the regime, which countered the PFGO actions with brutal repression. The Siakhal raid had ended in the death of all fedayis involved; almost all the founding members of the PFGO were slain or imprisoned in the following months. Nonetheless, Siahkal was widely regarded as a propaganda victory, and the lost fedayis were speedily replaced by enthusiastic rccruits. Between Siahkal and the summer of 1978, the PFGO undertook more than 2,000 acts of resistance, suffering many casualties; these actions continued to focus on the northern provinces. 59 By late 1976, Jazani, Ahmadzadeh, Pouyan, Ashraf, Nabdel—all the PFGO's original leaders—were dead. Their places were taken by Farokh Negahdar and Ali Keshtgar, members of the Jazani faction. Noting the failure of five years of self-sacrificing struggle to begin the revolution, they concluded that "objective conditions1' were not yet ripe for revolutionary action. Negahdar, a former Tudeh youth organization member, enforced the Tudeh line in the PFGO; Revolution had to proceed through the bourgeois-democratic stage, and intensive political preparation was needed before a socialist revolution. In 1977-1978, Ashraf Dehgani, a sister of one of Ashraf s original followers (and daughter of a veteran of the Azerbaijan revolution) who had distinguished herself in guerrilla activities, protested. She compared Negahdar's line to the Mensheviks' position: The Mensheviks, Dehgani noted, had advocated stage-by-stage transformation rather than Lenin's socialist revolution. Iran, Dehgani affirmed, could skip over the capitalist period of development as Russia had in 1917. Armed uprising would create the objective conditions for political education and revolution. This was a recapitulation of Ahmadzadeh's position. 60 After the Islamic Revolution, this schism erupted. Initially, both factions had submerged their differences and had joined the Tudeh to fight the shah. As the Khomeini government consolidated itself, peasant councils were established among the Turkman population in the Caspian region, requesting land reform and local autonomy. Negahdar, following the centralist Tudeh policy, opposed this local uprising; Dehgani supported it. Dehgani was always hostile to the Islamic Revolution, seeing it as a reactionary substitute for class revolution. After the Turkmanistan uprising was suppressed, she left the PFGO and created the People's Fedayin Guerrillas (PFG), dropping the word "organization." When antigovemment fighting broke out in Kurdistan, Dehgani unequivocally denounced the Islamic Republic, calling for immediate armed uprising and class warfare. 61 As of this writing, Dehgani's group still functions in Kurdistan and remains a firm advocate of social revolution while emphasizing the nationality question. It considers the war on religion as part of the class struggle and continues to denounce the Tudeh and its loyalty to the Soviet Union. 62 The PFGO suffered many more schisms, the most important of which resulted from the fighting in Kurdistan and the Islamic Republic's policy toward ethnic minorities. One faction, the Majority, led by Negahdar, continued to side with the Islamic Republic, support the Tudeh, and regard the Soviet Union as

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the "socialist base," while the Minority regarded the Tehran government as a reactionary force. Initially, the Minority denounced Dehgani's call to arms as "adventurist" and stressed political education of the masses, but after Banisadr's ouster in June 1981, it, too, opted for armed uprising. 63 The Majority continued to support Khomeini until 1983, when the Islamic Republic suppressed them along with the Tudeh. The group's remnants, now underground, retain close ideological and organizational ties with the Tudeh. 64 The Mujahedin-i Khalq, or People's Holy Fighters, had much in common with the PFGO. The social origins of its members, in particular, resembled those of the Ahmadzadeh-Pouyan group, almost all coming from religious, traditional middle-class backgrounds. Their occupational backgrounds were in the lower tiers of the government bureaucracy and educational system; a very large percentage were secondary-school teachers. Thus they were part of the new lower-middle class that was frustrated by their lack of social mobility. 65 Muhammad Hanifnezhad and five other recent University of Tehran graduates founded the Mujahedin in 1965. Hanifnezhad was an Azeri agricultural engineer from Tabriz who had met Taleqani and Bazargan in prison after the 1963 riots. He had studied Marxist writings, concluding that the National Front had failed because it had lacked organizational structure and a coherent ideology; he and his cofounders resolved that the more radical Mujahedin would not suffer from these flaws. 66 The close-knit, clandestine organization owed a great deal to Lenin's tactics. In ideology, it blended Marxism with Shi'i Islam: "Islam and Marxism," a 1975 Mujahedin pamphlet explained, "teach the same message for they fight against injustice. . . . Since Islam fights oppression, it will work with Marxism, which also fights oppression." 6 7 The Mujahedin, influenced by Shariati, resolved to use Shi'i Islam as a means of mobilizing the masses. Like the PFGO, the Mujahedin advocated both urban and rural guerrilla warfare. However, the Mujahedin decided that the shah's land reform had destroyed the countryside's potential as a revolutionary base and insisted on the primary importance of the cities. Like the PFGO, the Mujahedin advocated the creation of a people's army in the course of the guerrilla struggle to combat the regime. The Mujahedin's foreign policy objective was to expel Western influence and make Iran a nonaligned nation; the influence of Mossadegh's concept of negative equilibrium could be seen here. However, and unlike the PFGO, the Mujahedin—because of the influence of Islam—did not advocate class warfare; they proposed an alliance between the working and middle classes. Also unlike the PFGO, they had no position on the issue of autonomy for ethnic minorities. These differences, combined with the Mujahedin's insistence on using Islam as an ideological cornerstone, led to persistent friction with the PFGO. After the Islamic Revolution, their disagreements often prevented the two organizations from cooperating with one another. 68 The Mujahedin began guerrilla activities in 1971, in efforts to disrupt the shah's lavish 2,500-year anniversary of the Iranian state. By the late 1970s, their

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IRAN IN T H E T W E N T I E T H CENTURY

activities, like those of the PFGO, petered out in the face of police repression. The entire original membership and many later members were killed, and most others were imprisoned. Meanwhile, the group suffered its share of internal schisms. Sazmane Marxist-Leninistiye Paykar—the Marxist-Leninist Organization of Battle—split away after a 1974 visit to Khomeini in Baghdad. Those who had visited Khomeini were among the most devout Moslems in the group when they arrived, but his insistence that he be accepted as their spiritual and political leader raised questions in their minds about the Shi'ite hierarchical structure. By mid-1975, they had left the Mujahedin, rejecting the belief in Shi'i Islam as a potentially progressive force. Paykar relied on the more traditionally Marxist concept of class warfare; after the revolution, Paykar became increasingly Maoist in its orientation and grew closer to Ashraf Dehgani's PFG. 6 9 Despite schism and governmental repression, the organizational structure of the Mujahedin survived to make a substantial contribution to the revolution. In 1978, the Bakhtiar government, as part of its belated liberalization, released the members still in prison, and as the revolution heated up, the Mujahedin's armed m e m b e r s h i p grew to well over 100,000. On February 12, 1 9 7 9 — t h e anniversary of Siahkal—the Mujahedin, in combination with the smaller Tudeh and PFGO forces, led the uprising that gave the Bakhtiar regime its final blow. During the course of the revolution, rivalry between Ayatollah Khomeini and the M u j a h e d i n grew; while M u j a h e d i n leaders formally supported Khomeini's call for a theocracy, they were not unified. Many preferred a more secular democratic government, but the majority was unwilling to risk the revolution's gains by creating an open rift. They sought to modify rather than to eliminate Khomeini's theocracy, proposing Ayatollah M a h m o u d Taleqani as president of the Islamic Republic. 7 0 By late summer of 1979, however, the outburst of ethnic revolts and Khomeini's insistence on an Islamic theocracy prompted the Mujahedin to reevaluate their position and take a stand on the ethnic minorities issue. During the Turkmanistan uprising the Mujahedin had denounced the actions of the PFGO; but now the Mujahedin's revolutionary program (drawn up in January 1979) called for more leniency toward "national minorities." It also called for prolabor welfare-state legislation, expropriation of the comprador bourgeoisie's property, the nationalization of natural resources, equal rights for w o m e n , and the establishment of a people's army. All these demands were threatening to the Islamic Republic. Khomeini refused to create a people's army or the people's councils that the leftist Mujahedin requested, fearing that these entities would impinge upon his power. All these measures, he pointed out, were contrary to the patrimonial concept of the imamat.lx After Banisadr was ousted in June 1981, the Mujahedin launched bloody street riots in protest and joined temporarily with him to form a government in exile. Since that time, the organization has been engaged in guerrilla warfare with the Islamic Republic. Their chief base is in Kurdistan on the border between Iran and Iraq. Even after the 1988 truce with Iraq, the M u j a h e d i n

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launched an offensive in southern Kurdistan; within Iran, their activities are concentrated in the cities. Their current programs call for a confederate system of government with substantial local autonomy. Both Marxism and Islam, the two components of their early ideology, have been deemphasized in favor of nationalism. 7 2 Even outside Iran, there were significant groups emphasizing political activity against the shah; the two major organizations were the Iranian Students Confederation and the Islamic Students' Society (ISS). The confederation was established in the late 1950s. Like the National Front, it included a diverse array of subgroups. Ali Shayegan, a member of Mossadegh's cabinet, was the chief organizer and figurehead leader. According to Sanjabi, "Because of the shah's repression, we had to find an avenue for political activities, for getting our voices heard, abroad. We thought the creation of the confederation would provide us with this avenue." 7 3 After 1960, the Tudeh (then pursuing a united front policy) joined the confederation; because of its ideological cohcsiveness, the Tudeh soon exerted enormous influence. By 1967, the confederation joined the Association of University Students, a pro-Soviet group. However, the SinoSoviet rift appeared here, as it had in the avowedly Marxist groups. After the confederation groups turned toward Mao, the Tudeh denounced them and created its own students' organization. 7 4 The ISS was founded by National Front and Liberation Movement elements in the confederation who were disturbed by its leftward drift. Nakhshab, the "Islamic socialist" Iran Party veteran, founded the ISS branch in North America. Mustafa Chamran, who had received his doctorate at Berkeley, helped Nakhshab expand the ISS; he later became a defense minister in the Islamic Republic. 7 5 In France, the founders of the ISS were Sadeq Gotbzadeh and Abolhasam Banisadr. Gotbzadeh, a Kashani supporter during the Mossadegh years, had left Iran after the 1953 coup. As a student of the liberal political scientist Richard Cottam in the United States, Gotbzadeh joined the confederation, then left it because of its Maoist orientation. In France, he cooperated with Banisadr in forming the ISS branch there and in gaining support for the ISS in Arab states such as Algeria. Banisadr's highly religious family came from Hamadan; his father had worked for Razmara. Banisadr was a graduate of the University of Tehran's school of theology. In the 1960s, he went into exile in France, where he received his doctorate in economics at the Sorbonne. There he wrote many works denouncing Iran's dependence on the West and focusing on the failings of Iran's economic modernization. He advocated negative equilibrium with a religious basis. As he told the author, "I was influenced by Mossadegh's concept of negative equilibrium, and after some study I realized that Mudarres had advocated the same idea." Banisadr came to the conclusion that negative equilibrium was the only means of obtaining true independence: "Negative equilibrium should be based on religion, because it is a product of Iranian culture, religion, and history." 7 6 In his works, the mixture of Islam with secular political concepts—a central

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feature of ISS propaganda and the Islamic Revolution in its earlier stages—was pronounced. Shariati's influence on this mixture was great; the ISS distributed Shariati's writings. The ISS had considerable influence among lower-middle-class air force technicians while they were training in the United States. At training centers in Colorado, Texas, and Virginia, the ISS attracted these young Iranians, with their religious background. The confederation and the ISS conducted massive demonstrations; their antishah activities and publications did a great deal to sway Western public opinion. Both groups were also in contact with the Mujahedin inside Iran, and with Khomeini in Iraq, and during the revolution, many of their members returned to Iran to participate in the street fighting and demonstrations against the shah. The air force technicians who had been exposed to ISS propaganda in the United States, and who retained their loyalty to the religious establishment, brought its radical Islam to the many mosques near Tehran's military stations. The confederation, like so many other leftist groups during the revolution, split into factions over the question of what its attitude should be toward the Islamic Republic. A faction advocating armed struggle, the Ettehadiyeyi Kommonisthayi Iran—the Communist League of Iran—attempted to stage an uprising in the Caspian city of Amol in January 1982. This attempt, marked by the peasants' traditional hostility to ethnic minorities and the perceived atheism among the revolutionaries, was a fiasco.77 After Banisadr's ouster in June 1981, the ISS, too, divided into a more secular pro-Mujahedin and a more religious pro-Khomeini faction. Both factions continue to function, the foimer, of course, in exile or underground.

Ayatollah Khomeini and the Foundations of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the central figure in the Islamic Revolution, had begun his career in politics as a reformer, not a revolutionary. The son-in-law and pupil of the well-respected and often apolitical Ayatollah Hossein Borujerdi, the leader of the Shi'ite hierarchy, Khomeini did not become politically active until after Borujerdi's death. A follower of Kashani in the early 1950s, Khomeini followed him in breaking with Mossadegh over the latter's tolerance of the Tudeh, then reverted to inactivity. The 1963 land reform, which seriously injured the clergy's economic power, galvanized Khomeini into active resistance to the government. Declining to join any political organization, he bitterly denounced the shah's contravention of the constitution and his relations with the United States and Israel. After Khomeini went into exile in 1964, his opposition to the monarchy became increasingly virulent. The shah's continuing encroachments on the clergy's role, and his attempts—reminiscent of Reza Shah—to legitimize his

IMPERIAL

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rule by stressing links with Iran's pre-Islamic past, earned Khomeini's anger. In 1971, while M o h a m m a d Reza Shah was celebrating Iran's 2 , 5 0 0 - y e a r anniversary, Khomeini delivered a series of lectures, later incorporated into his book, Velayat-i Faqih Hukomati Islami (The Guardianship of the Jurist: The Islamic Government). This book became the ideological foundation for the Islamic Republic. Khomeini emphasized the necessity for creating "political Islamic revolution" throughout the Islamic world. The existing governments in Moslem countries, he claimed, were barriers to the unity of the Moslem umma, or people: "It is a duty of all Moslems in every single Islamic nation to implement political Islamic revolution to its victorious end." 7 8 His opposition to the political division of the Islamic umma explains his friction with nationalists in Iran (including ethnic minorities) and elsewhere in the Moslem world after the Islamic Revolution. 7 9 Khomeini appealed to the bazaar is, cautioning them: "Our country has become an Israeli base. Our bazaar is also in their hands. If this situation continues, and Moslems stay indifferent, our bazaars would cease to exist." 8 0 This was a reference to the shah's promotion of several Jewish and Bahai families to positions of commercial preeminence, giving them monopolies which had hitherto been bazaar prerogatives. In his book, for the first time, Khomeini explicitly condemned the institution of monarchy. The duties of government, he claimed, had been passed by Mohammad to the imams, whose successors were the Islamic jurists who should exercise spiritual and political authority simultaneously as Mohammad and Ali had. Khomeini denounced the idea of the separation of religion and the state as a Western conspiracy to keep Iran politically dependent by preventing Islam from assuming its rightful role in governing the nation. 81 Islam, the book emphasized, was the source of all laws and political governance. All legislation should be Islamic law, and the culture, society, and the legal system should be purged of non-Islamic influences. The ulama were to have the leading role in saving Islam from imperialism by establishing an Islamic government. Jurists were to have ultimate executive, administrative, and planning authority, since they had the highest knowledge of Islam: "Whatever we need to maintain our national freedom and independence, the jurist possesses. The jurist will not fall under the influence of foreigners. . . . It is the jurist who will defend the rights, f r e e d o m , and territorial integrity of the Islamic nation with his l i f e . " 8 2 Khomeini's emphasis on the necessity for an imam or jurist to maintain Islamic unity and implement Islamic law is a reflection of the patrimonial, hierarchical Shi'ite concept of imamatP

11 The Islamic Revolution

Islam

must

social

classes.

be a social

a national

force

. . . It must

liberation

to close

also

movement

the gaps

be a political against

between ideology,

economic which

the

Khomeini the people's that

was

revolution,

as Kerensky culture;

. . . why

the

intellectuals

and themselves but the mullahs

they

established

and lead

imperialism. — A l i Shariati

During

will

and

as Lenin. were their

the

leftists

They

did not

the product

(1975-1976) thought

of

understand

of that culture,

and

hegemony.

— A b o l h a s a m Banisadr, to the author

In early 1977, international pressures prompted the shah to begin relaxing police constraints. A variety of groups abroad, including the students' confederation and the ISS, had drawn the world media's attention to the shah's repression and widespread use of torture. By 1976, reports by Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists had enumerated lengthy and well-documented lists of human rights violations, 1 and, in the course of the 1976 U.S. presidential election, Jimmy Carter had pointed to them in his campaign. As often happens in Iranian politics, a change in U.S. administration prompted the shah to alter his internal policy. In the first half of 1977, as a result of relaxed police controls combined with growing discontent caused by the economic bust, a variety of reformist groups were formed within Iran. The most important was Bazargan's Committee for the Defense of Freedom and Human Rights in Iran, which was in contact with U.S. human rights activists. Lawyers, writers, and teachers also formed professional associations, which wrote open protest letters to the imperial palace. The National Front's successor organizations, including the Liberation Movement, reemcrged to direct the professional and human rights organizations. Hassan Nazieh, a close associate of Bazargan, became the head of the Lawyers' Association. Rahmatollah Moghaddam, a prominent Azerbaijani National Frontist who had 216

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close links with Ayatollah Kazem Shariatmadari, the religious leader of Azerbaiajan, headed the Writers' Association. Mohammad Derakhshesh, Amini's Minister of Education, became head of the Teachers' Association. In June 1977, Bazargan wrote an open protest letter to the shah. This letter, bearing the signatures of the National Front leaders Sanjabi, Bakhtiar, and Foruhar, asked for the reinstatement of the constitution. It also substituted the Iranian Islamic year for the new imperial calendar system and omitted the shah's honorific title, Light of the Aryans. It circulated widely, though it was not published in any newspaper. 2 In 1977, the shah's visit to Washington was marked by a large, well-organized, and undeniably hostile demonstration by the students' confederation and the ISS; the demonstration was shown on Iranian television, where it made a great impression on the public. 3 The shah followed two contradictory policies toward the reformers: He tacitly permitted the political parties to reemerge; and he dismissed his loyal premier, Hoveyda, appointing Jamshid Amouzegar, a U.S.-cducated economist, in his place. Amouzegar was assigned the task of rescuing Iran's economy. The policies that had irritated the bazaar were abandoned. The government diminished its hostility toward the clergy, even proposing to sponsor a theological seminary in Mashad; however, among Amouzegar's austerity measures was the elimination of the clergy's state subsidy. While conciliating the bazaar in this fashion, the shah put heavy pressure on the opposition, using SAVAK in a campaign to intimidate the leaders, including Sanjabi, Bakhtiar, Bazargan, and Moghaddam. By this dual technique of conciliation and repression, the shah hoped to replace them in the leadership of the masses. Because of past experience, the Pahlavi monarch saw the National Front, and not the religious hierarchy, as his most dangerous opponents.

The Shah Is Forced Out In January 1978, an article in the court-associated paper Ettela'at attacked Khomeini in obscene terms. T h e theological center of Qum immediately revolted, and scores of people were massacred. The shah declared martial law in Qum, and a cycle of violence began. In February, on the fortieth day after the Qum massacre—the fortieth day after a death is a religiously stipulated mourning day—a procession in Tabriz ended in political revolt. The Tabriz revolt, conducted largely by unskilled laborers from the countryside who had lost their j o b s in the recession, was extremely violent; hundreds of people were killed. The shah extended his declaration of martial law, replacing the provincial governor with a general. The fortieth day after the Tabriz massacre resulted in similar violence throughout the country, and the cycle went on. 4 By the summer, the country was in the throes of revolution. T h e shah's policy of intimidating secular opposition leaders while conciliating the religious masses had backfired: The masses had found an avenue of political expression in

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religion and a political leader in the uncompromising Ayatollah Khomeini. Tapes and leaflets distributed through the mosques familiarized the people with Khomeini, who, in exile in Iraq, was invulnerable to the shah's pressures. W h e n the shah arranged with Iraq for Khomeini's expulsion to France, he only magnified Khomeini's status. Suddenly this religious leader was in the global limelight and had the attention of Western media and intelligence analysts. T h e shah continued to fear the National Front as his major enemy. In the late spring of 1978, Sanjabi had informed the public that the National Front was willing to take part in free elections without the participation of the C o m m u n i s t s . As Sanjabi explained to the author, the reason for stipulating the exclusion of the Communists was to deprive the shah of his usual e x c u s e for avoiding free elections—"the fear of C o m m u n i s t p e n e t r a t i o n . " 5 T h e shah responded to this offer by calling the National Front "more traitorous than the Tudeh." 6 By the end of the summer, in an effort to counter the National Front, the shah had replaced A m o u z e g a r — whose "belt-tightening" measures had been unpopular with the masses—with Sharif Imami, who had strong ties to the religious hierarchy. Imami made several gestures to conciliate the shah's opponents, disbanding Rastakhiz and abolishing the imperial calendar. These concessions, however, were too little, too late. In late 1978, the new lower-middle class, galvanized into firm opposition to the regime while the shah vacillated, took action. With its firm control of the enormous government bureaucracy, this class was able to paralyze the regime by staging frequent strikes: Strikes of technicians in the National Iranian Oil Company deprived the government of its revenues; strikes by teachers and most Ministry of Education employees released the students for demonstrations. The wheels of government ground to a halt. Through its close religious and social ties to the working class and the bazaar, the lower-middle class was able to prevent the government from reacting effectively to the challenges that the clergy, the bazaar, and the urban poor posed. By September, the situation had become so uncontrollable that Sharif Imami declared martial law in Tehran, but the crescendo of revolution was so high that the public simply ignored this declaration. In Jaleh Square in central Tehran, a bloody clash on September 8, 1978, resulted in hundreds of deaths. The massacre, called Black Friday, ended any hope the shah had ever had of reaching a compromise with reformist elements among the religious opposition. Chief-of-Staff General Gholam Reza Azhari replaced Sharif Imami and imposed military rule on all of Iran's major cities. T h e shah, now desperate for allies against the religious forces, tried to compromise with the National Front and other liberal leaders he had previously persecuted. First he sought Amini's acceptance of the premiership, but since Amini requested control of the army and the shah's abdication as a precondition, this negotiation fell through. Sanjabi, meanwhile, went to Paris to see

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Khomeini and arranged an alliance between him and the National Front. Sanjabi described this alliance as a means of winning freedom for Iran, "as similar alliances between secular constitutionalists and religious elements had in the Constitutional era." 7 Under pressure from Khomeini to eradicate any possibility of compromise with the shah, Sanjabi made a public pronouncement that declared the Pahlavi monarchy illegal and contrary to the principles of Islam. On Sanjabi's return to Tehran, the now-desperate shah offered him the premiership; he offered to accept on the condition that the shah leave and give him the control of the army. The shah replied, "If I leave the country, nobody can control the army." Without the control, Sanjabi was unwilling to accept the premiership; as he told the author: "How could I have trusted the shah, after what he did to Qavam after the Azerbaijani and Kurdish events? After what he had done to Mossadegh and Amini?" 8 The shah's previous victories had sown distrust and cynicism among opposition leaders and the public; they now contributed to his downfall. As these events unfolded, many of Iran's long-standing opposition groups found themselves substantially unprepared. The National Front still lacked a clear ideology, program, and organizational structure. It attempted to establish an official alliance with the Freedom Movement, but the front's secular approach, as opposed to the Freedom Movement's religious orientation, created an impasse. 9 The Tudeh reemerged and, consistent with its post-1960 united front policy, attempted to form an antidictatorship front. Bazargan and other National Front leaders refused this alliance. The traditional suspicion between the liberal elements and the Communists continued after the revolution and contributed to the clergy's consolidation of power. 10 While the National Front was still in shock from the rush of revolutionary events, the Mujahedin and the PFGO—using Khomeini as a symbol—waged vigorous guerrilla warfare against the shah. One factor that facilitated Khomeini's takeover of the National Front's political momentum was the prevalence of anti-U.S. feeling in Iran. Khomeini had consistently opposed the United States for its support of the royal dictatorship. In the eyes of the Iranian public, the United States had replaced Britain as Iran's chief oppressor, and Khomeini capitalized on this fact. In France, Khomeini (counselled by advisors, notably Banisadr) minimized his hostility toward the United States, expressed his plans for Iran's future government in deliberately vague terms, and vigorously denounced the Communists. The United States and other Western powers, notably France, were impressed by the relative moderation of his pronouncements, which, in this period, made the Carter administration lean in his favor. Supporting the shah was becoming an increasingly difficult position. 11 In an attempt to regain the West's backing, the shah appointed Bakhtiar, Sanjabi's deputy, premier. Shortly thereafter, the shah left Iran under the weight of domestic and foreign pressure. The National Front, categorically rejecting compromise with the monarchy, soon expelled Bakhtiar.

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The Islamic Republic Bakhtiar had tried to create a nonaligned constitutional monarchy after the pattern of the 1906 constitution. This undertaking was doomed to failure; the various branches of the armed forces had no experience working with one another or taking orders from a civilian. The shah's divide-and-rule policy had made the government and army he left behind extremely fragile. Bakhtiar, though unable to control Tehran, had insisted on maintaining a grip on the provinces (the similarity of Kerensky's policy toward Finland is noteworthy) and aroused considerable opposition in Azerbaijan, Kurdistan, and Baluchistan by his centralist, National Front-like policy. His attempts to restore order were hopeless, as army units went over to the revolutionary side.12 On February 12, 1979, heavy street fighting in Rasht, Tabriz, Sanandaj, and Mahabad, as well as Tehran, led by the PFGO and the Mujahedin in commemoration of the 1971 Siahkal uprising, resulted in the defection of the air force technicians in Tehran. These technicians, who had a long-standing rivalry with the better-paid and more privileged Imperial Guard, were enthusiastic in fighting them. The collapse of Bakhtiar's moderate government was assured. Bazargan, with Khomeini's backing, succeeded Bakhtiar, and a "dual authority" situation followed the brief rule of moderates. Khomeini chose Bazargan because of his affiliation with the religious Freedom Movement, which Khomeini much preferred to the National Front. 13 However, as Banisadr later noted, "Bazargan's government was a reformist government and could not take revolutionary measures. His government was unable to respond to the tremendous pressure from below, and this pressure . . . eventually led to the mullahs capturing political power." 14 Because of their close ties to the religious masses, the clergy were able to harness this pressure from below. In an effort to neutralize the clergy, Bazargan gave many of them, including Hashemi Rafsanjani, high administrative posts; Banisadr claims that Bazargan did this in order to prove that the clergy were incompetent administrators. However, the strategy backfired; it gave the clergy government experience.15 Bazargan's authority was soon sharply curtailed by the radical Islamic revolutionaries, who dominated a variety of alternate power centers, foremost among them the clergy-dominated Revolutionary Council, headed by Ayatollah Mohammad Beheshti, the Islamic Revolution's principal ideologue. Even the council's secular members were mostly Freedom Movement affiliates, who were susceptible to religious authority. It became a major powerbase. Banisadr, Hojatoleslam (a religious title one rank below ayatollah) Ali Khamenei, and Hojatoleslam Rafsanjani all moved up through the ranks of the council to high government posts; Khamenei later became president. Any action the Bazargan government undertook required the council's approval. The council referred its differences with the official government to Khomeini, who usually resolved in favor of the council. In the spring of 1979, the council referred a constitutional draft, prepared by National Front and Freedom Movement members appointed by

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Bazargan, to Khomeini. Khomeini, noting that the proposed secular constitution made no provisions for velayat-i faqih—the Islamic jurist's guardianship of society—and did provide for the convocation of local assemblies, promptly rejected it. "In a few months," said Mansour Farhang—Iran's former ambassador to the UN and an advisor to Banisadr—"the Revolutionary Council becamc the true authority in Iran." 16 Other alternate p o w e r centers included revolutionary committees and tribunals, the Islamic Republican Party (IRP), and, after May 1979, the Pasdaran, or Revolutionary Guards, which supplanted the remnants of the shah's army. T h e s e subsidiary power centers formed a network under the direct command of the Revolutionary Council and Beheshti, furthering the goals of the revolution throughout Iran. Islamic committees, established in factories, villages, and urban neighborhoods, brought the IRP's power to the remotest areas of the country, gave instruction in the concepts of Islamic government, and supplanted the administrative power of the local governments. The tribunals implemented revolutionary justice, eliminating many officers in the shah's army, SAVAK agents, and former officials in the shah's government. Bazargan constantly criticized the role of the committees and tribunals, complaining that they weakened his power. 1 7 E t h n i c and religious minorities' grievances, kept s u b s u r f a c c u n d e r Mohammad Reza Shah as under his father, erupted in the revolutionary era. The central government (Bazargan as well as the Revolutionary Council and its affiliates) soon faced heavy resistance in Kurdistan, Khuzistan, the Turkman area, Azerbaijan, and Baluchistan. In the first few days of the revolution, the Kurds in the Mahabad area demanded local autonomy and the use of their own language. While an assembly of experts controlled by the IRP was preparing the Islamic constitution, Kurdish resistance increased. T h e Sunni Kurds objected to the incorporation of the Shi'ite concept of velayat-i faqih into the constitution, and to its failure to provide for local assemblies. As the Kurds' opposition to the government mounted, it became increasingly radicalized, to the extent that the Sunni religious leader in Mahabad, Ezzudin Hosseini, declared his acceptance of socialism and demanded the establishment of peasant councils in Kurdistan. Ayatollah Taleqani openly sided with the Kurds in the dispute over autonomy that developed in the summer of 1979. 18 Fighting broke out between Sunni and Shi'ite Kurds in the Sanandaj area, and, as in 1946, between Sunni Kurds and Shi'ite Azeris around Rezaieh. A variety of leftist groups, including the K D P and the PFG, took over urban areas in northern Kurdistan and elected their own local assemblies. Although these ad hoc administrations were forced out of the cities, fighting in Kurdistan continues up to the date of this writing. In Azerbaijan also, groups attempted to establish local autonomy. One group of students and workers formed at the University of Tabriz—Pishgaman, or the S c o u t s — w a s particularly associated with Ayatollah Shariatmadari. Shariatmadari's opposition to the incorporation of the velayat-i faqih principle in the constitution created an ever-growing rift between him and Khomeini. In late

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1979, the Hizbeh Khalqeh Mosalman—the Islamic People's Party (IPP)—look over Tabriz and sought Shariatmadari's support. Moghaddam, the National Frontist governor of Azerbaijan, took sides with the IPP; the ADP, now aligned with the centralist Tudeh, sided with the central government. The uprising fell apart in a few days. 19 The remaining ethnic uprisings were primarily based on religious lines: Sunni Baluchis clashed with Shi'ite Sistanis and asked for local autonomy; in Khuzistan, Sunni and Shi'ite Arabs fought Shi'ite Persians and the central government—the Arabs, like the Baluchis, asked for local autonomy. In Bandarlangeh in the Persian Gulf, also, there were bloody clashes between Sunni and Shi'ite populations. However, in the northern provinces, many revolts, while they may have had an ethnic or religious flavor, had a strong class content. In Kurdistan, Mazandaran, Gilan, eastern Azerbaijan, and Caspian Turkmanistan, peasant movements rose up demanding distribution of land. The Gilani and Mazandarani movement, organized by leftist students, was called Jangal after Kuchik Khan's movement. In Sunni Turkmanistan, as noted above, peasant councils confiscated land against the wishes of the central government. The PFGO's attempts to coordinate the Turkman uprising were hampered by linguistic, religious, and cultural barriers, as the Khorasan Division revolt had been in 1945. 20 Throughout the tumultuous period of dual authority, radical secular groups, including the Tudeh, the Mujahedin, and large segments of the PFGO, aligned with Khomeini against National Front and other liberal elements. Khomeini's centralism and antiliberal, anti-Western policies influenced the leftist groups. The Tudeh classified Iran's revolution as "democratic anti-imperialist" and adopted a policy of united front with the revolutionary forces—excluding the liberals—while the revolution was still consolidating its gains. Tabari traced this policy's origins to Haydar Khan's theses in the Gilan revolution. The antagonism of the Tudeh and other leftist groups for the National Front greatly facilitated Khomeini's removal of the liberal opposition. 21 Bazargan was forced to resign in November 1979. His rival Banisadr succeeded him and soon found himself in Bazargan's position; the clerical faction relieved him of control of the armed forces, where his power and popularity had been growing. A siege mentality in Iran, created by two simultaneous international crises, increased the influence of the Revolutionary Council and its apparati. The 19791980 crisis involving Iran's retention of U.S. hostages and the Iraqi invasion contributed to the militarization of society. In this period, the Islamic constitution, with provisions for velayat-i faqih and none for local assemblies, was made law. In June 1981, Banisadr, who had attempted to fight the IRP's increasingly pervasive domination of the new legislature, was removed in a fashion resembling a coup d'état. Control of the armed forces enabled the religious faction to oust him. After Banisadr's ouster, the government was indisputably theocratic. Many former supporters of the revolution, including Gotbzadeh and Sanjabi, became

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its victims. Shariatmadari was placed under house arrest in Qum; all opposition groups were suppressed. Now that the liberal elements were out of the way, the suppression focused on leftist groups, including all PFGO factions, the Mujahedin, and, in 1983, the Tudeh and the ADP. 2 2 The country was now firmly in the grip of the IRP. The revolutionary tribunals were integrated into the judicial system. The IRP purged the government bureaucracy and universities of ideological opponents and completely Islamicized education. The Pasdaran became an increasingly vital part of Iran's armed forces, supplanting the regular army in its influence. Islamic law was extended into all aspects of daily life—into dress codes, employment, marriage, travel, and commercial exchanges. During this radical period, the Islamic Revolution, like the revolutions in Gilan and Azerbaijan, assumed a degree of class content. The Islamic Republic cemented its support among the mostazefin, or exploited, class by confiscating the property of the tagoti, or exploiting class; the latter group was essentially what has been described as the upper class. Khomeini succeeded in winning the lower classes' loyalty where the leftist parties had been unable to do so. Explained a former Paykar cell leader: The Marxist groups were arguing bitterly with one another and trying to prove that each one was better ideologically than the next, they did not really understand Iranian religious culture. After the revolution, many leftist political agitators were received with hostility by the "exploited" urban masses. But Khomeini and the IRP agitated in a manner that the downtrodden religious masses understood. 2 3

After the revolution, Iran's foreign policy was primarily one of negative equilibrium. All military agreements with the United States were rescinded, and all U.S. military stations and surveillance posts in Iran were disbanded; the hostage crisis had minimized U.S. influence in Iran. Relations with the Soviet Union were correct, but cold. The Islamic Republic pursued a variety of thirdpower options. Economic and political relationships with China, Japan, Western Europe, and North and South Korea were strengthened; oil reserves enabled Tehran to maneuver among these nations. Iran attempted yet again to become a regional power. This time, Islamic ideology was a cornerstone of regional foreign policy: The ulama's influence over the Shi'ite community in Lebanon gave Iran leverage there; an alliance was formed with Syria in response to Iraq's close relationship with conservative Arab nations in the Gulf. War with Iraq was due to several factors, foremost among them ideological conflict. The Ba'athist Iraqi government promoted a secular Arab vatan, or nation; the Islamic Republic sought a religious umma, the unity of all Moslems based on religious conviction. Iraq, like Iran, was attempting to become a major power in the Gulf and in the Arab world. Iraq's humiliation by the shah's forces in a brief 1975 war contributed to its decision to attack. By the time of the cease-fire in 1988, the war had become a global issue with far-

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reaching effects on the relationship between the superpowers, as well as on all the neighboring countries. T h e United States' abortive attempt to gain influence in Iran through arms sales was an effort to establish equilibrium with the Soviet Union both in Iran and in the area. The Carter administration had considered the idea of supporting an "Islamic belt" on the Soviet Union's southern border and had given Khomeini diplomatic support for this end; this does not imply that the United States fomented the Islamic Revolution, merely that the administration sought to exploit the situation. The Islamic belt policy was a permutation of the United States' northern tier policy, which had been designed to prevent Soviet i n f l u e n c e . 2 4 Hashemi Rafsanjani, who followed a moderate economic and political policy within the Islamic framework, had indicated that Iran would be willing lo renew relations with the United States. The Reagan administration, anxious to restore equilibrium in strategically vital Iran, seized Rafsanjani's initiative. The Soviet Union's relationship with the Islamic Republic has been cautious and somewhat uncertain. In its Twenty-sixth Congress in 1981, the Soviet Communist Party warned: "The banner of Islam may lead into struggle for liberation. This is borne out by history including very recent history. But it also shows that reaction, too, manipulates with Islamic slogans to incite counterrevolutionary mutinies." 2 5 T h e similarity to Lenin's caveats regarding panIslamism, and bourgeois nationalism in general, is striking. The dilemma of bourgeois nationalism in Communist ideology continues to affect Irano-Soviet relations. On the one hand, the Soviets applauded the "anti-imperialism" of the Islamic Republic's religious nationalism. On the other, they were disturbed by Khomeini's opposition to socialism at home and abroad. 26 After the Tudch and other Iranian leftist groups were suppressed, relations grew more strained. Another difficulty, stemming from the Gilan era, is the 1921 treaty. Whereas the Iranian government insists that the clauses permitting Soviet troops to enter Iran are no longer valid, the author's inquiries to Soviet sources indicate that they consider these clauses as still in full effect. 2 7 According to the Soviet official and scholar Georgi Arbatov, the pursuit of peaceful coexistence precludes a Soviet advance on the Gulf, as this move would begin a third world war. 2 8 But since the defense of the socialist base involves ideological as well as strategic security, the Soviets see cultural movements as intense as the Islamic Revolution as potentially dangerous factors when they occur on the Soviets' border. For this reason, the Soviets became uneasy about the continuation of the Iran-Iraq W a r and tried to persuade Iran to end it. The Soviets viewed the extension of Iran's political hegemony as an ideological threat; in the later years of the war, Iranian military advances and U.S. attempts to regain influence in Iran brought strong Soviet reaction. 2 9 While Iran's early efforts to exploit cold war tensions between Washington and Moscow preserved its independence of action and enabled it to continue the war with Iraq, the 1988 rapprochement between the superpowers eliminated this ability to maneuver. The supeipowers'

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joint opposition to the war's continuation, combined with the country's intense economic and military problems, forced Iran to sue for peace. 30 As always in Iranian politics, factions within its leadership have attempted to establish ties with the Great Powers in order to enhance their internal power bases, linking Iran's internal politics to the foreign policies of the United States and the Soviet Union. Beheshti's death in the summer of 1981 opened the way for the reemergence of factionalism within the framework of the Islamic Republic. The new factions evolved around two personalities: Hojatoleslam Rafsanjani and the present interior minister, Ali Akbar Mohtashami. Rafsanjani led the more pragmatic faction, publicly linked to pro-Western sentiments; Mohtashami led the more radical faction, and the one most associated with antiWestern statements and sentiments. In the governmental bureaucracy, Rafsanjani promoted efficient administration whereas Mohtashami stressed revolutionary dedication; in military affairs, Rafsanjani promoted the army over the more ideologically oriented Pasdaran and took control of the gendarmes from Mohtashami; in foreign policy, Rafsanjani opposed expanding the Islamic Revolution to foreign countries, favoring a consolidation of the Islamic structure in Iran. He also sought an end to the war with Iraq and closer ties with the West, moves resisted by his opponents. 31 There were factions within factions, and the rivalry was not totally stable: Long-time President Ali Khamenei, for example, moved from a radical position to one closely aligned with Rafsanjani. As the May 1988 elections approached, internal issues played an increasing role. That winter, Khamenei (taking a moderate position) had publicly said that the government should not play a major role in the economy and had proposed a more limited role for government throughout the society. Khomeini, who remained the final arbiter of power when he wanted to be, had responded vigorously: "The government which stems from the absolute power of the prophet Mohammad is the primary rule in Islam . . . taking precedence over praying, fasting, and making the Haj." Khomeini clearly resented any attempted limits on the power of his Islamic government. To counterbalance the conservative Assembly of Guardians, which evaluates parliamentary laws for compatibility with Islam and which was vetoing land reform bills and prolabor laws, Khomeini created a new body. This was the Assembly for Recognizing the Competence of the System, which was entrusted with reviewing the Guardians' vetoes. 32 In the May elections, the Mohtashami faction, in alliance with Premier Ali Musavi, won a majority of seats in the parliament after campaigning on a platform of greater government control of the economy. To preserve the balance of power, Khomeini—who by his own public pronouncements on economic issues had helped ensure the radical victory—appointed the moderate Rafsanjani as supreme commander of the armed forces. The Pasdaran, always associated with the hard-liners and radicals, were placed under Rafsanjani's direct command. Khomeini supported Rafsanjani's foreign policy initiatives, silencing all objections from the radicals to Rafsanjani's peace initiatives, as he had earlier

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done during public criticism over the negotiations with Oliver North. 33 Musavi and his government, however, continued to favor (and implement) stringent economic controls. Mohtashami, after the election, openly criticized supporters of a "capitalist economy": Twenty years of struggle of the Iranian nation against oppression was in order to achieve Islamic values, not to enable a group of capitalists to exploit and rule the dispossessed. Otherwise, what is the difference between Islamic values and the oppressive system?" 3 4

The factions concerned themselves primarily with the the economy; but the economic issues they discussed focused largely on foreign investment, so foreign policy continued to interact with domestic. Khamenei and Rafsanjani, in addition to supporting a fortified Iranian private sector, favored Western involvement in the postwar economic reconstruction. In a Friday prayer service after the truce with Iraq, Khamenei said: There have been many warning shouts to us to the effect that we should not allow the foreigners to enter the country, and they should not invest any money here. . . . As Mr. Rafsanjani has said, we should avoid all sorts of radicalism and emotionalism regarding these issues. 3 5

Khamenei asserted that Iranians could only rebuild their country with foreign assistance, and that a governmental onslaught against private-sector Iranian investment would drive needed capital underground. In the same lecture, he attacked the organization and discipline of the Pasdaran. 3 6 Musavi and Mohtashami both took a hard line against foreign (i.e., Western) participation in the postwar economic reconstruction. They accused Khamenei and Rafsanjani of trying to make Iran lose its economic and political independence through dependency on Western consumer goods: "In the era after the war, as in wartime, we must attempt to control prices in favor of the mustazafin [oppressed], and all of our revenue and spending policies must be in favor of [them]." 37 Whereas Rafsanjani's proposed internal "free market" was associated with pro-Western leanings, Musavi's insistence on government control of the economy was linked in Iranian public opinion with pro-Soviet leanings. 38 At a September 5, 1988, governors' conference, which both Mohtashami and Musavi attended, Musavi lauded economic independence as one of the positive achievements of the revolution and attributed this economic independence to Iran's negative equilibrium in foreign policy. He advised the governors to continue economic reconstruction with a similar lack of dependency on foreign investment: "We must remain loyal to the original and main goals of the revolution," that is, establishing independence in internal and foreign policy, and even more especially, economic independence. Mohtashami emphatically recommended rebuilding Iran without foreign corporations and asked for a harder line in foreign policy. The conference ended with a resolution emphasizing the need for economic reconstruction without any reliance on foreign forces. 39 This resurgent radicalism did not go unchecked. Two days later,

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on September 7, Khomeini curtailed the government's authority to implement economic controls. Meanwhile, Rafsanjani and his parliamentary allies forced Musavi's planning and budget, trade, energy, and rural construction ministers out of the government. Khomeini, however, insisted that Musavi himself remain. Obviously, Khomeini, as always, wanted to preserve a rival force with which to curb Rafsanjani's power. 40 At the time of this writing, the "moderates" led by Rafsanjani are in apparent control of the government of the Islamic Republic. The moderates are characterized by a pragmatic approach to economics and revolutionary dogma, and a desire to reach rapprochement with the West. Their rise to power up to the present time has been a sort of seesaw of political forces, in which internal and external factors were balanced against one another. Khomeini has acted as a fulcrum in the tenuous political balance in Iran, ensuring that neither side becomes strong enough to dominate the political system that he has created. In this, he is following a pattern well-established in Iranian history.

Conclusions Whatever divides backwardness.

the nation

into different

groups

is a cause

of

Iran's

—Ahmad Kasravi (1945) The only way that Iran has survived equilibrium. . . . Negative equilibrium have political equilibrium internally.

. . . is by following a policy can only be achieved when

of we

— M o s s a d e g h (1944) Our religion

is our politics,

and our politics

is our religion. —Ayatollah Mudarres (1923)

Economic modernization under the second Pahlavi monarch was accompanied by political underdevelopment and failed to rationalize or differentiate bureaucratic institutions. Through the failure to provide opportunities for social mobility, political participation, and elite circulation, the monarchy created mass alienation, not mass assimilation. The economic and political situation was especially frustrating to the new lower-middle class, the religiously oriented bazaaris, and the urban poor who had recently migrated from the countryside. The shah's attempts to gain political legitimacy through associations with Iran's pre-Islamic past only further alienated the clergy, which formed a strong alliance with these frustrated classes. The shah's actions took the reformist momentum away from liberal nationalism, while simultaneously suppressing liberal nationalists as potential contenders for power; social and political cynicism among the middle class, perpetuated by the encouragement of apolitical behavior, prevented them from forming a viable political force. 41 Hence, the

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

revolutionary Islamic nationalism of Khomeini remained the only avenue for mass mobilization. The charismatic leader Khomeini provided a "national myth" around which the revolution could crystallize. Understanding the crucial importance of religion in Iran's political culture, Khomeini's national myth linked the shah's oppression with Western imperialism and secularism and called for the simultaneous expulsion of all three. The contest between secular and religious forces for control of Iranian society, evident in the Constitutional Revolution, arose anew, and this time ended in the triumph of the religious forces. Ethnic and religious factionalism, though, remain serious barriers to the Islamic Republic's establishment of absolute political hegemony. Kurdistan is a center of opposition to the central government; local autonomy, and religious and linguistic differences with the Shi'ite central government, are crucial issues in this opposition. Whatever Iran's ultimate fate, its many ethnic minorities will undoubtedly have a major role in it. After Khomeini's death, the political factions sparring for control of Iran may change. However, the pattern of factional strife involving approaches to internal as well as foreign policies will probably endure. Iran's political system is deeply rooted in this pattern of rival power groups. Perhaps correctly, Iran sees equilibrium, within the country and in foreign affairs, as the only means it can use to survive as a nation. Within the political parties, factionalism has been a recurring theme. Ideological and personal differences have made cooperation within, let alone among, the competing secular parties next to impossible. The question of centralism versus local autonomy has proved a continuous source of ideological rifts. The dilemma of the bourgeoisie, a difficult problem for the Iranian left since the time of the Gilan revolution, continues to pose difficulties for the leftist parties. The related question of whether to skip over the "bourgeois stage of development," and how long this stage should last, has caused innumerable schisms. Iran's recent history offers striking continuities to Iranian foreign policy since the Constitutional Revolution. Under the shah, as in the postrevolutionary government, Iran's internal and foreign policies continued to interact. While the shah pursued a one-sided, pro-Western policy, the Islamic Republic has generally pursued negative equilibrium between the two superpowers, following the traditional third-power policy. The postrevolutionary government manipulated cold war tensions between the two superpowers to become a regional power. Oil remains a decisive factor in Iran's foreign policy formulation and implementation. U.S. and Soviet policies toward Iran (under the shah as well as under the Islamic Republic) remain similar to those evidenced in the 1946 crisis and before. The U.S. policy was adapted from Great Britain's policy toward Russia, and the Soviet policy was essentially that expressed in the Brest-Litovsk Treaty of 1918. The U.S. policy has endeavored to preserve Iran, preferably a proWestern Iran, as a buffer against the Soviet Union. The Soviets, following the

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policy of defense of the socialist camp, have sought to minimize Western influence in Iran—to neutralize Iran as a potential anti-Soviet base. Obviously, these goals, both of which call for an independent Iran, can be (and have been) manipulated by Iranian statesmen to enhance Iran's position in the international arena and their own positions in the spectrum of Iranian politics. Political forces within Iran have sought to maintain equilibrium (either positive or negative) between the Great Powers. Although the powers themselves have changed, from Britain to the United States and from tsarist Russia to the Soviet Union, Iran has retained the same general pattern of balancing one power with another. The Great Powers have been active players in Iran's domestic arena throughout the century, and rival political factions have sought to ally themselves with one power to alleviate the influence of the other. Because of these interactions, domestic and foreign factors are closely linked and are almost impossible to examine in isolation from one another. The interaction of internal and external policies has had a great impact upon the fate of Iran and will certainly continue to do so. In times of crisis, the character of an individual, or of a nation, appears in sharp relief. Details that might be unclear in a period of calm are made apparent. The strengths, the weaknesses, and the motivating forces are brought to the surface. Such is the case with the upheavals that have shaken Iran in the twentieth century. While an astute observer might be able to delineate Iranian society and culture from a study of the nation at peace with itself, the periods of revolution provide a much clearer picture of the relative strengths of the various social and cultural forces. The most striking feature of the revolutionary movements in modern Iranian history is the continuity of the social forces that drove them. The class structure of Iran has evolved considerably in the past century, but the patrimonial religious culture of Iran remains essentially the same. In the Constitutional Revolution, secular and religious forces cooperated to achieve a parliamentary system, but the antagonism between the two groups was evident. In the revolutions in Gilan and Azerbaijan, conflict between secular and religious forces was more pronounced, and the importance of religion contributed greatly to the revolutions' collapse. Finally, in the Islamic Revolution, secular politicians, at first allied with the clergy, were removed from the Iranian political scene by a fervent Islamic theocracy. While peasants were important in several early revolutions, the urban middle classes had the central leadership roles in all. But the nature of the middle classes changed significantly in the course of the century. In the Constitutional Revolution, the bazaaris, together with a small intelligentsia, comprised the middle class. By the time of the Azerbaijan revolution, Reza Shah's modernization had created a new, more modern bureaucratic middle class, which was more inclined toward secularism. Finally, by the Islamic Revolution, the modem middle class had split into upper and lower segments, the former closely tied to the monarchy, the latter linked to the clergy and to the bazaaris. It was

230

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

this modern lower-middle class that paralyzed the Pahlavi state machinery and ensured the success of the Islamic Revolution. The left focused on the evolving class structure of Iran and tended to regard its evolution as proof that the country had entered a more modern, capitalistic stage of development. This emphasis led Iranian leftists, from the Tudeh to the People's Fedayin Guerrillas, to ignore the strong continuity of patriarchal Islamic culture and its influence on the masses. This, in large part, explains the left's failure, despite its organizational strength, seriously to challenge the power of the Islamic Republic. But, the conflict between centralism and provincialism that emerged during the Gilan revolution and Iran's ethnic, religious, and linguistic diversity also have proved potent sources of disunity. Persian chauvinism and nationalist centralism have fanned ethnic grievances throughout Iran's twentieth-century history. Recently, these grievances have been aggravated by the Islamic Republic's unequivocal call for all citizens to submit themselves to the rule of the faqih, or jurist. The major force shaping Iran's twentieth-century history has been, not class interests, but the religious, patrimonial culture—a culture that is not and has never been unified, but is characterized by segments—political, religious, and linguistic—each seeking foreign allies to enhance its position within the country.

Notes

Ch. 1 Notes 1. Mansour Farhang, "The Iran-Iraq War," World Policy Journal 2(Fall 1985):665. Farhang was Iran's ambassador to the UN under Banisadr. Ahmad Ghoreishi, a leading member of the shah's artificially created Rastakhiz Party during the late 1970s, reaffirmed my view on politics in Iran being a function of personality in a February 1987 speech on "Iran-U.S. Relations" at the University of Colorado at Boulder. 2. Richard W. Cottam, Nationalism in Iran (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1964), p. 134. 3. The ¡marnai Succession to the Prophet (Qum: Ursul-e-Din Publications, n.d.), pp. 1 - 2 . 4. George N. Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question. 2 vols. (London: Longmans, Green, 1892), vol. 1, p. 433. 5. On the arbitrary, personal nature of the Qajars' power, see especially Ann Lambton, "Persian Society under the Qajars," Royal Central Asian Journal 68 (April 1961): 123—139. 6. For a thorough account of Iranian society's internal divisions, see Ervand Abrahamian, Iran Between Two Revolutions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), p. 41. 7. The percentages on religion are from Britannica Book of the Year 1987 (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1987), p. 670. The percentages of the Azerbaijani population are from Faramarz Fatemi, The U.S.S.R. in Iran: The Background History of Russian and Anglo-American Conflict in Iran, its Effects on Iranian Nationalism and the Fall of the Shah (London: Barnes and Company, 1980), p. 78. 8. Fatemi, U.S.S.R. in Iran, pp. 3 6 - 4 9 . Another excellent discussion of the rulers' manipulation of factions in Iranian society is f o u n d in Ervand Abrahamian, "Oriental Despotism: The Case of Qajar Iran," International Journal of Middle East Studies, 5 (January 1974):3—31. On the Shahsavan, see Sir Percy Sykes, Tarikhe Iran [History of Iran], 2 vols. Trans, from English with additional information by Fakhrdaiy Gilani (Tehran: Elmi, 1956), vol. 2, p. 272. 9. Nikki R. Keddie, "Class Structure and Political Power in Iran since 1976," Iranian Studies 11 (1978):330. 231

232

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

10. Raymond Gastil, "Middle Class Impediments to Iranian Modernization," The Public Opinion Quarterly 22 (Fall 1958):325. 11. On peasant villages and their population, see also Fred Halliday, ¡ran: Dictatorship and Development, 2d ed. (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books, 1979), p. 106; and Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 10-11. On the tribes in Kurdistan, see Najafgoli Pesyan, Marg bud Bazgasht ham bud [There Was Both Death and Retreat] (Tehran: Chap, 1948), pp. 154-155. One tribe had 200 clans in 1948. Up to this date, northern Kurds referred to southern Kurds as ajam (foreigners). I am grateful to Karim Sanjabi and other Kurdish scholars for explaining this divisiveness to me in detail. 12. Quoted by Fereydoun Hoveyda, The Fall of the Shah. Trans. Roger Liddell (New York: Liddell Books, 1979), pp. 68-69. 13. See M o n o Ono, "On the Socio-Economic Structure of Iranian Villages With Special Reference to Deh" The Developing Economies 5 (1967):462. Deh means "village" in Farsi. 14. Farhad Kazemi and Ervand Abrahamian, "The Nonrevolutionary Peasantry of Modern Iran" Iranian Studies 11 (1978):293. 15. On kadkhodas and absentee landlords, see James A. Bill, "The Social and Economic Foundation of Power in Contemporary Iran," Middle East Journal 17:400-418, esp. p. 402. 16. For the figures on land ownership, see Avetis Sultanzadeh in Chosroe Chaqueri, ed., Asnade Tarikhy: Jonbeshe Kargari, Sosial-Demokrasi va Kommunisti-e Iran [Historical Documents: The Workers' Social Democratic and Communist Movement in Iran], 20 vols. (Florence: Mazdak, 1970-), vol. 8, pp. 137-183. 17. Ono, "Socio-Economic Structure," p. 462. 18. For an excellent discussion of the landlord-peasant relationship, see Ann K. S. Lambton, Landlord and Peasant in Persia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 6 and passim. 19. The Holy Qur'an, ed. Ali Yusuf (Lahore: Sheikh Muhammmad Ashraf, Publisher and Bookseller, 1975), Sura 4, Verse 59. 20. In 1975, during a trip to Dareghaz in Khorasan, I asked a kadkhoda in a nearby village, "Who owns these cultivated lands?" I knew the land had been given to the peasants by the 1963 land reform but had previously been a religious endowment of the shrine of Imam Reza. But the kadkhoda answered, "Imam Reza owns this land. We are his peasants." Bureaucrats in Dareghaz told me all local peasants shared this attitude. 21. L a m b t o n , Landlord and Peasant, pp. 295-296; Sultanzadeh, in Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 8, pp. 138-139. See also C. Sahami, L'Economie rurale et la vie paysanne dans la province sud-Caspienne de I'Iran, le Guilan [Rural Economy and Peasant Life in the Southern Caspian Province of Iran, Gilan] (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965). 22. Abrahamian and Kazemi, "Peasantry," p. 289; Pesyan, Death and Retreat, p. 154. 23. Cottam, Nationalism, esp. pp. 1 - 1 1 , 23-32. Also see Zonis, The Political Elite; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 153; Gastil, "Middle Class"; and Hossein Adibi, Tabageyeh Motevaseti Jadid dar Iran [The new middle class in Iran] (Tehran: Jameah, 1979). 24. On the stresses leading to revolution, see Ronald H. Chilcote, Theories of Comparative Politics (Boulder: Westview Press, 1981), p. 352. 25. The issue of whether or not Kurdish and Azerbaijani minorities constitute "national minorities" is beyond the scope of this book.

NOTES

233

26. M o h a m m a d Reza Pahlavi, Towards the Great Civilization, quoted by H o v e y d a in Fall, pp. 2 7 - 2 8 , 30, 118-120. 2 7 . Z i m m e r m a n , cited in S t e p h e n J. A n d r i o l e a n d G e r a l d W . H o p p l e , Revolution and Political Instability: Applied Research Methods (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1960), p. 68. 28. See, e.g., Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Communist Manifesto (New York: I n t e r n a t i o n a l Publishers, 1948), pp. 4 3 ^ 4 4 ; V. I. L e n i n , Lenin on the National and Colonial Questions 3 Articles (Peking: Foreign L a n g u a g e s Press, 1967), p. 23; and Joseph Stalin, On the Opposition (Peking: Foreign L a n g u a g e s Press, 1972), p. 507. 2 9 . L e n i n , Collected Works. 45 vols. ( M o s c o w : P r o g r e s s P u b l i s h e r s , 1966), vol. 31 ( A p r i l - D e c e m b e r 1920), p. 91. 30. V. I. L e n i n , Socialism and Religion (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1979), p. 9. 31. A n t o n i o Gramsci, Letters from Prison: Selected Translations from the Italian. Trans, and introd. by L y n n e Lawnes (New York: Harper and R o w , 1975). S e e a l s o W a l t e r A d a m s o n , Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci's Political and Cultural Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980). 3 2 . C h a l m e r s J o h n s o n , Peasant Nationalism and Communist Power (Stanford: S t a n f o r d University Press, 1967), p. 27. 33. All definitions relating to equilibrium (both positive and negative) are my o w n b u t w e r e f o r m e d with help especially f r o m an interview with Karim Sanjabi, the f o r m e r head of the National Front, in his h o m e in Chico, California, on J u n e 27, 1987. In a telephone interview on O c t o b e r 6, 1986, Ali Amini, a f o r m e r I r a n i a n p r i m e minister, c o n f i r m e d the validity of my d e f i n i t i o n s . For further a c c o u n t s of equilibrium in Iranian foreign policy, see Hussein Kiostovan, ed., Siyasate Movazeneye Manfi dar Majlese Chardahom [Politics of N e g a t i v e E q u i l i b r i u m in the F o u r t e e n t h M a j l i s ] . 2 vols. (Tehran: M u z a f f a r N e w s p a p e r , 1948-1950). 34. S e e F. Petrenko and V. Popov, Soviet Foreign Policy: Objectives and Principles ( M o s c o w : Progress Publishers, 1985). 3 5 . G e o r g i A r b a t o v , The War of Ideas in Contemporary International Relations. Trans. David Skvirsky (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), pp. 2 6 2 263 and p a s s i m . 3 6 . S e e Q u i n c y W r i g h t , " P o l i t i c a l I d e a l i s m in I n t e r n a t i o n a l P o l i t i c s , " World Politics 5 (October 1952-July 1953): 1 1 6 - 1 2 8 , an insightful p h i l o s o p h i c a l essay that begins as a review of John Herz's book on "realist" foreign policy. 37. K e n n a n ' s "X A r t i c l e , " in C h a r l e s G a t i , ed., Caging the Bear: Containment and the Cold War (Indianapolis: B o b b s - M e r r i l l , 1974), p. 9 - 2 5 . Also R i c h a r d Pipes, ed., U.S.-Soviet Relations in the Era of Detente (Boulder: W e s t v i e w P r e s s , 1981); and A r t h u r M. S c h l e s i n g e r , Jr., "Origins of the C o l d War," Foreign Affairs 46 (October 1967):22-52. 38. T r u m a n , quoted in Gati, Caging the Bear, p. 48. 39. K e n n a n , in ibid, p. 18.

Ch. 2 Notes 1. A b r a h a m i a n , " D e s p o t i s m , " p. 19. 2. Z a h r a S h a j i i , Namayandigan-i Majlis-i Shoray-i Mellidar Bistoyek Dowrey-i Ganungozari [ R e p r e s e n t a t i v e s of the N a t i o n a l A s s e m b l y in 21

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Legislative Assemblies] (Tehran: Institute of Social Research, University of Tehran, 1965), p. 18. 3. Seyyed Mohammed Samadi, Hamzieh Aga Mangour (Mahabad, n.p., 1985), p. 4. On the sheikhs' influence in northern Kurdistan, see Pesyan, Death and Retreat, p. 154. 4. A. Reza Sheikholislam, "Patrimonial Structure of Iranian Bureaucracy in the Late 19th Century," Iranian Society 11 (1978): 199-258; Abrahamian, "Despotism," pp. 20-21; Sykes, History of Iran, vol. 2, pp. 531-532; and Hussein Makki, Mirza Taqi Khan Amir Kabir (Tehran: Elmi, 1958), pp. 210-262. 5. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 41. 6. Sheikholislam, "Bureaucracy," pp. 220-221; Behzad Touhedi-Baghini, "Historic and Economic Roots of the Iranian Revolution" (Ph.D. dissertation, American University, Washington, DC, 1983), p. 44; and Makki, Taqi Khan, pp. 210-226. 7. Shajii, Representatives, p. 18. 8. Ahmad Ashraf, Mavane a Tarikhye Roshd e Sarmayedari dar Iran: Doureyeh e Qajariyeh [Historical Obstacles to the Development of Capitalism in Iran: The Qajar Era] (Tehran: Zamineh, 1980), p. 100. 9. Ashraf, Capitalism, pp. 80-81. 10. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 34; Touhidi-Baghini, "Roots," pp. 48, 54. 11. Touhidi-Baghini, "Roots," pp. 50-69; see also Ashraf, Capitalism; and Parsa Benab, "The Soviet Union and Britain in Iran, 1917-1927" (Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University, 1974), pp. 66-89; and Keddie, "Class." 12. Shajii, Representatives, p. 18; Sheikholislam, "Bureaucracy," p. 220; M. S. Ivanov, Engelabe Mashruteye Iran [The Iranian Constitutional Revolution], Trans, from Russian by Azar Tabrizi (Tehran: Nobahar, 1978), p. 3; and M. S. Ivanov, Tarikhe Novine Iran [Contemporary History of Iran], Trans, from Russian by Houshang Tizabi and Hassan Ghasempanah; intro. Ehsan Tabari (Stockholm: Tudeh Publishing Center, 1956; translation, 1977), p. 11. 13. Houshang Mahdavi, Tarikhe Ravabete Kharejiye Iran az Ebtedaye Dorane Safavi la Payane Jange Dovvome Jahani [The History of Iranian Foreign Relations from the Beginning of the Safavi Era until the End of World War I] (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1985), pp. 292-295; and Muriel Atkins, Russia and Iran 1780-1828 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), pp. 58-60 fn 11. 14. Curzon, Persia, vol. 2, p. 621. 15. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 480—481; also Abrahamian, Iran, p. 55. 16. Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 52-53. 17. Hussein Adibi, Tabageyeh Motavasete Jodid dar Iran [The New Middle Class in Iran] (Tehran: Jameah, 1979), pp. 82, 85 fn 2; Farhang Ghassemi, Sandikalism dar Iran [Syndicalism in Iran] (Paris: Mossadegh Foundation, 1985), pp. 35, 58. 18. On Enzeli as a transit point, see A. Masoudi, Khaterate Mosaferat i Mosko [Reminiscences of a Trip to Moscow] (Tehran: Ettela'at, 1950), p. 3. 19. Ibid.; and Ashraf, Capitalism, pp. 66, 98-99. 20. Cottam, Nationalism, pp. 103, 119. 21.Kazemi and Abrahamian, "Peasantry," p. 289; also Ivar Spector, The First Russian Revolution: Its Impact on Asia (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: n.p., 1962), p. 38. 22. Ashraf, Capitalism, p. 100; V. Ulyanovsky, ed., Comintern and the East: A Critique of the Critique (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1981), p. 283. Also Schapour Ravasani, Sowjetrepublik Gilan: Die Socialistische Bewegung im

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Iran seil Ende des 19. Jahrhunderts bis 1922 [The Gilan Soviet Republic: T h e Socialist M o v e m e n t in Iran f r o m the End of the Nineteenth Century to 1922] (Berlin: Basis-Verlag, 1973), pp. 125-126. 23. R u h o l l a h K. R a m a z a n i , The Foreign Policy of Iran 1500-1941: A Developing Nation in World Affairs ( C h a r l o t t e s v i l l e : U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s of Virginia, 1966), p. 126; and Ghassemi, Syndicalism, pp. 4 9 - 5 3 . 24. Ghassemi, Syndicalism, pp. 2 3 - 5 3 . 25. Touhidi-Baghini, "Roots," pp. 4 8 - 5 4 ; and Fereydoun Adamiyat, Fekre Demokrasiye Ejtemaiy dar Nehzate Mashrutiate Iran [Social Democratic Trends in the Constitutional M o v e m e n t in Iran] (Tehran: Payam, 1975) pp. 2 2 - 2 3 . 26. Ravasani, Gilan Soviet Republic, p. 127. 27. Makki, Taqi Khan, esp. pp. 119, 203, 124-125. 28. On Taqi Khan's centralization, see a fascinating and well-researched eight-hour videotape filmed by the Radio and Television of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Amir Kabir ( 1 9 8 5 - 1 9 8 6 ) . 29. Ibid.; and Shajii, Representatives, p. 19. On Taqi Khan, see also Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 5 3 - 5 4 . 30. Makki, Taqi Khan, p. 188. 31. Curzon, Persia, vol. 1, p. 416. 32. Hussein Makki, Zendigiyeh Siyasiye Sultan Ahmad Shah [The Political Life of Sultan A h m a d Shah] (Tehran: Amir Kabir Publishing Organization, 1978) pp. 10, 12; and David Mclean, Britain and her Buffer States: The Collapse of the Persian Empire (London: Royal Historical Society, 1979), pp. 5 2 - 5 3 . 33. Adamiyat, Ideology e Nehzate Mashrutiate Iran [The Ideology of the Constitutional M o v e m e n t of Iran] (Tehran: Payam, 1975), pp. 9 - 1 0 ; Mehdiquli Hedayat, Katerat va Katarat [Memories and Dangers] (Tehran: Zavar Bookstore, 1965), pp. 4 2 - 5 4 , 6 4 - 6 5 . 34. Adamiyat, Ideology, pp. 2 5 - 26. 35. Ibid., esp. p p . 3 - 1 9 . 36. On the B a b i s t s , see T o u h i d i - B a g h i n i , "Roots," pp. 96-99; A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 1 6 - 1 7 ; Ivanov, Constitutional Movement, p. 4; and Ivanov, History, p. 8; Amin Banani, The Modernization of Iran, 1921-1941 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1961), p. 25; Makki, Taqi Khan, pp. 2 5 7 259; and, on their influence on al-Afghani, see Nikki R. Keddie, Sayyid Jamal adDin "al-Afghani" (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), pp. 19-22. 3 7 . J a m a l M o h a m m e d A h m a d , The Intellectual Origins of Egyptian Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), p. 16. 38. Keddie, Jamal ad-Din, pp. 136-137. 39. A d a m i y a t , Ideology, pp. 2 4 - 2 5 . 4 0 . Sykes, History of Iran, pp. 6 1 5 - 6 1 7 ; Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 6 5 - 6 7 ; Makki, Taqi Khan, p. 189; Edward Browne, The Persian Revolution of 1905-1909 (London: Cambridge University Press, 1910), pp. 3 1 - 4 3 . 4 1 . Qanun 22 (1891) in Adamiyat, Ideology, p. 22. 4 2 . Ibid., p p . 2 5 - 2 6 . 4 3 . B r o w n e , Persian Revolution, p. 51; on the tobacco boycott see also, A n o n y m o u s , Rish-i o Ravandi Tarikhiye Jonbeh i Tanbako [Roots and Trends of the Tobacco Movement] (U.S. and Europe: Moslem Students' Association, n.d.); and Nikki R. Keddie, Religion and Rebellion in Iran: The Tobacco Protest of 1891-92 (London: Cass, 1966). 4 4 . Curzon, Persia, vol. 2, p. 629. 4 5 . A d a m i y a t , Ideology, pp. 4 7 - 4 9 . 46. Ibid., p. 50.

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4 7 . H e d a y a t , Memories, p. 110; E d w a r d Browne, The Press and Poetry of Persia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1914), p. 130. 48. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 79. 49. Ibid., pp. 7 9 - 8 0 ; and Ismail Ra'in, Anjoman Haye Seri dar Enghelabeh Mashrutiate Iran [Secret Organizations in the Iranian Constitutional R e v o l u t i o n ] (Tehran: T e h r a n - M u s s a v a r Publishing, 1965). 50. A d a m i y a t , Ideology, pp. 3 4 1 - 3 4 2 ; Mirza Hassan Taqizadch, speech on July 27, 1934, p u b l i s h e d as "Modern Persia," The Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 32; no 262 ( N o v e m b e r 10, 1 9 3 3 - N o v e m b e r 9, 1934):965-975, esp. p. 968. 51. A d a m i y a t , Social Democratic Trends, pp. 2 5 - 2 6 , and Ideology, pp. 3 3 3 - 3 3 6 ; Hedayat, Memories, p. 150. 52. On Azerbaijanis' absorption of Western influence, see Ivanov, History, p. 19; B r o w n e , Press and Poetry, esp. pp. 2 7 - 1 6 6 ; H. L. R a b i n o , "Liste des j o u r n a u x d e P e r s e [List of Persian Journals]," Revue du Monde Musulman 22 ( 1 9 1 3 ) : 2 9 2 - 3 1 5 ; a n d R a h i m R e i i s n i y a and H u s s e i n N a h i d , Sattar Khan va Khiabani do Mubareze Jonbeshe Mashruteh [Sattar Khan and K h i a b a n i : T w o Fighters of the Constitutional M o v e m e n t ] (Tehran: Agah, n.d.), pp. 1 6 9 - 1 7 1 ; and Sakina B e r e n g i a n , "Poets and Writers f r o m Iranian Azerbaijan in the T w e n t i e t h Century" (Ph.D. dissertation, C o l u m b i a University, 1965). 53. B r o w n e , Press and Poetry, pp. 16, 23; Abdolsamed K a m b a k s h , Nazari Be Jonbeshe Kargari va Kommonisti dar Iran [A Survey of the L a b o r and C o m m u n i s t M o v e m e n t in Iran] (Stockholm: Tudeh Party of Iran, 1972), vol. 1, p. 14; Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, pp. 1 6 7 - 1 6 8 . 5 4 . F e r e y d o u n A d a m i y a t , Andishehayi Talebof [Talebof's Thoughts] (Tehran: D a m a v a n d , 1984). 55. Ibid., p. 23. 56. Ibid., p. 59. 57. O n T a l e b o f , see A d a m i y a t , Ideology; Abdulrahim Talebof, Siyasat-i Talebi [ T a l e b o f s Politics] (Tehran: Nobahar, 1978); and Ehsan Tabari, " T a l c b o f - i Tabrizi [Talebof of Tabriz]," Donya 2, no. 4 (Winter 1961):85-92. 58. D a v i d Mclean, Buffer States, pp. 5 6 - 5 9 . 59. M e h d i M a l e k z a d e h , Tarikhe Enghelabe Mashrutiyate Iran [History of the Constitutional Revolution of Iran], 5 vols. (Tehran: Sugrat Press, 1945), vol. 2, pp. 3 9 - 4 4 . 60. M o h a m m a d T a q i B a h a r , Tarikhe Mokhtassare Ahzabe Siyasiye Iran [Brief History of the Political Parties of Iran], 2 vols. (Tehran: S e p e h r , 1942 [republished 1984]), vol. 2, p . 10. 61. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 8 4 - 8 5 . 62. F o r the full translation of the constitution and s u p p l e m e n t a l laws see Browne, Persian Revolution, pp. 3 6 2 - 3 8 4 . 63. K i o s t o v a n , Negative Equilibrium, vol. 1, p. 4; Ivanov, Constitutional Revolution, p. 6; A d a m i y a t , Ideology, p p . 3 4 7 - 3 6 9 , 3 8 3 ^ 3 3 ; and S a y y i d Hassan T a q i z a d e h , Zamineh-i Enghelab-i Mashrutiyat-i Iran [The B a c k g r o u n d of the Iranian Constitutional Revolution] (Tehran: G a m , 1951), pp. 4 2 - 4 3 . 6 4 . A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 1 0 3 - 1 0 4 ; Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, p. 12; and K a m b a k s h , Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, p. 16. 6 5 . G h a s s e m i , Syndicalism, pp. 2 2 - 2 3 ; A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 92. 6 6 . R e i i s n i y a a n d N a h i d , Sattar Khan and Khiabani, p. 29; H e d a y a t , Memories, 1 4 6 - 1 4 7 ; and Taqizadeh, Background. 67. H e d a y a t , Memories, pp. 1 4 6 - 1 4 7 . 68. O n the origin of anjomans and their crucial role in the C o n s t i t u t i o n a l R e v o l u t i o n , see L e f t e n Stavros Stavrianos, Global Rift: The Third World Comes Modern

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of Age (New York: Morrow, 1981), pp. 391, 394; and Spector, First Russian Revolution, pp. 4 4 - 4 9 . 69. Sykes, History of ¡ran, vol. 2, p. 629. 70. Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, pp. 1 - 2 8 ; Ivanov, Constitutional Revolution, p. 9; Adamiyat, Ideology, esp. pp. 2 3 8 - 4 8 7 ; Adamiyat, Social Democratic Trends, esp. pp. 3-159; and Shajii, Representatives, esp. pp. 5 0 - 9 1 . On the National Revolutionary Committee, see Malekzadeh, Constitutional Revolution, vol. 2, pp. 220-221. 71. Adamiyat, Ideology, p. 469. 7 2 . Ibid. 73. Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, p. 28. 74. Ibid., pp. 26-31; Hedayat, Memories, p. 159. 75. Ravasani, Gilan Soviet Republic, pp. 129-134; Ismail Ra'in, Haydar Khan Amu Oglo (Tehran: The Research Organization of Ra'in, 1973), esp. pp. va 16-17; Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, p. 5; and Grigor Yegikian, Shouravi Jonbeshe Jangal: Yaddashthaye Yek Shahede Eyni [The Soviet Union and the Jangal Movement: Writings of an Eyewitness]. Ed. Burzuyeh Dehgan (Tehran: Novin, 1984), pp. 397-471. 76. On the Bolsheviks and the 1907 treaty, sec Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, p. 409. 77. Ra'in, Haydar Khan, esp. p. 16; and Lavrenti Beria, On the History of Bolshevik Organizations in Transcaucasia (n.p., Proletarian Publishers, n.d.) [a speech delivered at a meeting of party functionaries July 21-22, 1935], esp. pp. 152-153. 78. Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 19, p. 118: Ghassemi, Syndicalism, pp. 49-53. 79. Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 19, pp. 113-120; Ghassemi, Syndicalism, pp. 6 1 - 6 3 . 80. See especially Chapters 8 and 9 in this book. 81. Ra'in, Haydar Khan pp. 20-37; and Firuz Kazemzadeh, The Struggle for Transcaucasia 1917-1921 (Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1951), pp. 20-21. 82. Ra'in, Haydar Khan, pp. 20-37; Kazemzadeh, Struggle, pp. 20-21. 83. Adamiyat, Social Democratic Trends, p. 141. 84. Adamiyat, Social Democratic Trends, p. 136. 85. See Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, esp. pp. 1-28, on the crucial role of the Secret Center; Browne, Press and Poetry, p. 111. 86. Ghassemi, Syndicalism, pp. 65-76; Kambaksh, Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, p. 24; Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 4, p. 108; Browne, Press and Poetry, pp. 35-36. 87. Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, p. 11; Browne, Press and Poetry, p. 54. 88. Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, p. 11; Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 2, p. 119. 89. Browne, Press and Poetry, pp. 54, 115-116; Adamiyat, Ideology, pp. 274-277. 90. Browne, Press and Poetry, pp. 115-116; and Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, p. 167. 91. Adamiyat, Ideology, pp. 418-423. On the clergy's opposition to the Tabriz state anjoman, see Malekzadeh, Constitutional Revolution, vol. 2, p. 213. 92. Malekzadeh, Constitutional Revolution, vol. 2, pp. 227-242. 93. Adamiyat, Talebofs Thoughts, pp. 9 - 1 0 . 94. Hedayat, Memories, p. 159; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 89. 95. On the Atabak and related events, see Adamiyat, Social Democratic

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Trends, po. 19-20; Ra'in, Haydar Khan, pp. 5 7 - 9 6 ; Sykes, History of Iran, vol. 2, pp. 6 2 9 - 6 3 0 . 96. Quoted in Spector, First Russian Revolution, p. 49. 97. Quoted by Firuz Kazemzadeh, Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864-1914: A Study in Imperialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 503. 9 8 . S y k e s , History of Iran, vol. 2, pp. 6 3 2 - 6 3 8 ; and A h m a d Kasravi, Tarikhe Hejdah Saleyeh Azerbaijan ya Sarneveshte Gordon va Daliran [Eighteen Years' History of Azerbaijan, or the Fate of Brave Men and Heroes]. 8th ed. (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1981 [first published 1971]), p. 386. 99. A h m a d Kasravi, Zendiganiyi Man [My Life] (Tehran: Payam Press, 1946), p p . 3 2 - 3 3 . 100. See Sykes, History of Iran, vol. 2, pp. 6 3 1 - 6 3 2 on the first coup attempt; also Ra'in, Haydar Khan, pp. 9 9 - 1 0 0 . 101. Sykes, History of Iran, vol. 2, pp. 6 3 8 - 6 4 1 ; Hedayat, Memories, p. 72; Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, p. 200. 102. Sykes, History of Iran, vol. 2, p. 628; Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, p. 5. 103. Kasravi, History of Azerbaijan, pp. 2 8 0 - 2 8 1 ; Sykes, History of Iran, vol. 2, p. 640. 104. Reiisniya and Nahid, Saltar Khan and Khiabani, pp. 1 - 3 6 . 105. Kasravi, Tarikhe Mashrutehy-i Iran [History of the Iranian Constitution]. 2 vols. (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1961). 106. Adamiyat, Social Democratic Trends, p. 131. 107. Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, pp. 1 6 5 - 1 6 8 , 187— 189; Browne, Press and Poetry, pp. 27, 97-98. 108. Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani; Adamiyat, Social Democratic Trends, p. 13. 109. Kasravi, History of Azerbaijan, p. 316; Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, pp. 9 3 - 1 0 3 . 110. K a m b a k s h , Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, pp. 2 3 - 2 5 ; Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 19, pp. 9 3 - 1 0 0 ; Ghassemi, Syndicalism, pp. 49-53. 111. K a s r a v i , History of Azerbaijan, pp. 1 5 - 2 2 ; Ra'in, Haydar Khan, p. 103. 112. Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, pp. 110-112; Kasravi, History of Azerbaijan, pp. 8 4 - 9 5 . 113. Kasravi, History of Azerbaijan, pp. 6 6 - 6 7 . 114. M a l e k z a d e h , Constitutional Revolution, vol. 5, p. 133. 115. Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, pp. 11-13. 116. Ra'in, Haydar Khan, pp. 165-176; Kasravi, History of Azerbaijan, pp. 126-137; Adamiyat, Social Democratic Trends, pp. 144-151. 117. K a s r a v i , History of Azerbaijan, pp. 137, 147; Adamiyat, Social Democratic Trends, pp. 142-151; Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, pp. 1 1 5 - 1 5 3 ; and Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, pp. 11-14. 118. Ra'in, Haydar Khan, pp. 176-199; Adamiyat, Social Democratic Trends, pp. 1 4 2 - 1 5 1 ; Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, pp. 1 1 5 - 1 5 3 ; Kasravi, History of Azerbaijan, pp. 137-144; and Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, p. v. 119. Ali Azari, Giyami Sheikh Mohammade Khiabani dar Tabriz [The Revolt of Sheikh M o h a m m a d Khiabani in Tabriz] (Tehran: Safi Ali Shah, 1983), pp. 2 3 83 passim. 120. O n f o r e i g n a n d d o m e s t i c o p p o s i t i o n to the S h u s t e r m i s s i o n , see

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William Morgan Shuster, The Strangling of Persia (New York: Century, 1912); also Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, pp. 13-14. 121. Muvarek al-Dowleh Sepehr, Iran dar Jange Bozorg, 1914-1918 [Iran in the Great War] (Tehran: Adib, 1957; 1983), p. 9.

Ch. 3 Notes 1. Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 111-112; and Kaveh, 1917-1918 issues. 2. B r i t o n - C o o p e r B u s c h , Britain and the Persian Gulf 18941914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967), pp. 187-234, 3 0 4 347; George Lenczowski, The Middle East in World Affairs (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), p. 511; and Sepehr, Iran in the Great War, pp. 5 - 4 9 passim. 3. See Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 45-46; Sepehr, Iran in the Great War, pp. 7 3 - 8 6 ; and Christopher Sykes, Wassmuss: The German Lawrence (London: Longmans, 1936). 4. Parviz Homayounpour, L'affaire d'Azerbaïdjan [The Azerbaijan Affair] (Lausanne: Ambilly-Annemasse, 1966), p. 28. 5. Lenczowski, Middle East, pp. 54-55. 6. On Iranian politics and alliances in this period, see Sepehr, Iran in the Great War, pp. 237-246; Ramazani, Foreign Policy, pp. 129-130; and Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, p. 21. 7. Sepehr, Iran in the Great War, pp. 237-326; and Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, pp. 22-23. 8. Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, pp. 24-26; and Ahmad Ghoreichi, "Soviet Foreign Policy in Iran, 1917-1960" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Colorado at Boulder, 1965), p. 25. 9. Mustafa Fateh, Panjah Sal Nafteh Iran [Fifty Years of Iranian Oil] (Tehran: Payam, 1979), pp. 326-330. 10. Sir Percy M. Sykes, A History of Persia. 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1930), vol. 2, pp. 452^453; and Sykes, History of Iran (Farsi version), vol. 2, pp. 730-732; and Sepehr, Iran in the Great War, pp. 127-131. 11. Kasravi, History of Azerbaijan', Azari, Khiabani, p. 212; and Hamid Momeni, Dar Bariyeh-i Mobarizati Kordestan [Concerning the Struggle in Kurdistan] (Tehran: Shahbahang, 1979), pp. 24-25. 12. Y. Parsa Banab, "The Soviet Union and Britain in Iran, 1917-1927" (Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University, Washington, DC, 1974), p. 51. 13. As cited in Sepehr Zabih, The Communist Movement in Iran (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966) pp. 14-15; Azari, Khiabani, pp. 92-101; and Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, pp. 417-418. 14. Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, p. 215. 15. Azari, Khiabani, pp. 146-154, 182. 16. Ibid., pp. 130-154. 17. Ibid., pp. 126, 151-154. 18. Momeni, Struggle in Kurdistan, pp. 24-25. 19. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, pp. 417-418. See also Jangal 1, no. 7, p. 6; no. 9, pp. 1 - 3 . 20. Lionel Charles Dunsterville, The Adventures of Dunsterforce (London: E. Arnold, 1920) p. 28; also Georges Ducroq, "La politique du gouvernement des soviets en Perse [The Policy of the Soviet Government in Persia]," Revue du Monde Musulman 52 (1922):87.

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CENTURY

21. Ibrahim Fakhraii, Sardare Jangal [Commander of Jangal] (Iran: Javidan, 1964), pp. 3 9 - 4 0 ; Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 1, pp. 1 6 6 - 1 6 7 . 22. C h o s r o e C h a q u e r i , L'Union sovietique et les tentatives des soviets en Iran: 2 Essais historiques [The Soviet Union and Soviet Initiatives in Iran: T w o Historical Essays] (Tehran: Sultanzadeh Institute for Workers' Research, 1983), p. 11; and Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, p. 216. 2 3 . Jangal 1, no. 28, p. 2; also Abrahamian, Iran, p. 112. 24. F a k h r a i i , Commander of Jangal, pp. 2 8 - 3 0 , 1 8 0 - 1 8 5 25. Ibid., pp. 3 - 1 0 9 p a s s i m ; and Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, pp. 6 - 2 0 passim. 26. August 4, 1986, interview with f o r m e r m e m b e r s of the Jangal party; Fakharaii, Commander of Jangal, p. 216. 27. Ismail Jangali, Yaddashthaye Khatie Ismail Jangalis: Giyame Jangal [ H a n d w r i t t e n N o t e s of Ismail Jangali: R e v o l t of Jangal]. Intro, and cd. Ismail Ra'in (Tehran: Javidan, 1978), p. 72. 2 8 . Jangal 1, no. 15, p. 3. 1, no. 26, p. 5; A h m a d Ahrar, Mardi az Jangal [A Man from 2 9 . Jangal Jangal]. 2d ed. (Tehran: Novin Publishers, 1982), pp. 8 5 - 8 6 . 30. Y e g i k i a n , Soviet Union and Jangal, p. 188. 31. I am v e r y g r a t e f u l to K a r i m S a n j a b i ' s detailed e x p l a n a t i o n of the o r g a n i z a t i o n a l i s t a n d a n t i o r g a n i z a t i o n a l i s t factions d u r i n g his J u n e 27, 1987, interview with me. See also Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, pp. 2 7 - 2 8 . 32. Ibid., vol. 1, p p . v i i i - i x . 33. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 159. 34. Ibid.; and Azari, Khiabani, p. 181. 35. B a h a r , Brief History, vol. 1, pp. 2 7 - 2 8 . 36. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 122. 3 7 . C h a q u e r i , D ocuments, vol. 19, pp. 1 7 6 - 1 8 5 for the c o m p l e t e T a q i z a d e h speech; citation is on pp. 1 7 6 - 1 7 7 . 38. F o r an e x c e l l e n t a c c o u n t of t h e P u n i s h m e n t C o m m i t t e e , see J a v a d Komiteye Mujazat [Historical Secrets of the P u n i s h m e n t Tabrizi, Asrare Tarikhye C o m m i t t e e ] (Tehran: Kaviyan, 1983). See also Abrahamian, Iran, p. 112. 39. Azari, Khiabani, pp. 2 0 4 - 2 0 5 ; and A h m a d Kasravi, Sarnivisht-i Iran Chi h Khahad Bud? [What Will Be the Fate of Iran?] (Tehran: Ordibehesht, 1945), p. 50. 4 0 . Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, p. 119; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 112; and M. M a r t c h e n k o , "Kutchuk Khan," Revue du Monde Musulman 4 0 (1920): 102; also a letter from Ardeshir Ovanessian to the author, dated N o v e m b e r 24, 1988. 4 1 . Jangal 1, no. 26, p. 5. 4 2 . R a h i m z a d e h S a f a v i , Asrare Sugute Ahmad Shah [Secrets of A h m a d Shah's Collapse] (Tehran: Ferdousi Publishing, n.d.), pp. 1 2 3 - 1 2 4 . 4 3 . M a k k i , Ahmad Shah, p. 80 and passim; Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 1; and Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, p. 159. 44. August 4, 1986, interview with a former m e m b e r of the Jangal party. 45. Hussein J o w d a t , Tarikhcheh-i Firqeh-i Demokrat [A Brief History of the Democratic Party] (Tehran: Derakshan Press, 1969), pp. 9 5 - 9 6 . 4 6 . Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, p. 541. 4 7 . Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, pp. 5 6 - 5 9 . 4 8 . C h a q u e r i , Documents, vol. 19, pp. 1 1 3 - 1 2 0 . 4 9 . Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, pp. 2 4 9 - 2 5 0 . 5 0 . M a n s h u r G a r k a n i , Siyasate Dulate Shuravi dar Iran az 1296 ta 1306 [ T h e P o l i c y of the S o v i e t G o v e r n m e n t in Iran f r o m 1917 to 1927]

NOTES

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(Tehran: Mazaheri, 1947); Garkani quotes Ehsanollah's memoirs in Novy Vostok, p. 41. 51. Ibid., pp. 41—42. 52. From V. I. Lenin and Joseph Stalin, The Russian Revolution (New York: International Publishers, 1938), p. 275. 53. C a b l e from Trotsky, January 16, 1918, in Naisrollah Saifpour Fatemi, Diplomatic History of Persia, 1917-1923 (New York: Russell F. Moore, 1952) pp. 3 2 5 - 3 2 6 . 54. See the quote from Bahar cited at the beginning of this chapter, in Brief History, vol. 2, p. 15. 55. Dunsterville, Dunsterforce-, and Firuz Kazemzadeh, Struggle, p. 168. 56. S y k e s , History of Persia, vol. 2, pp. 4 9 7 - 4 9 8 ; on the twenty-six commissars see also Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, p. 130. 57. Makki, Ahmad Shah, p. 258. 58. James M. Balfour, Recent Happenings in Persia (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1922), p. 122. 59. R o h a n Butler, E. L. W o o d w a r d et al., eds., Documents on British Foreign Policy 1919-1939. First Series. 27 vols. ( L o n d o n : Her M a j e s t y ' s Stationery Office, 1949-1976), vol. 13, p. 639. Hereafter Documents on British Foreign Policy. 60. Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 1128-1129; vol. 13, pp. 429^132; and Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, p. 46. 61. Sepehr, Iran in the Great War, pp. 4 7 6 ^ 7 8 . 62. Documents on British Foreign Policy, vol. 4, p. 1208; see also Harish Kapur, Soviet Russia and Asia, 1917-1927: A Study of Soviet Policy Towards Turkey, ¡ran, and Afghanistan (New York: Humanities Press, 1967). 63. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States 1919 ( W a s h i n g t o n , DC: U.S. G o v e r n m e n t Printing O f f i c e , 1 8 6 2 - p r e s e n t ) , vol. 2, p. 700. 64. Fateh, Oil, pp. 1 4 8 - 1 5 1 . 65. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations, 1919, vol. 2, pp. 699, 701; Balfour, Recent Happenings, p. 130; and Fatemi, Diplomatic History, p. 79. 66. Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, pp. 16-19. 67. See, e.g., Jangal 1, no. 4, pp. 5 - 6 ; 1, no. 9, pp. 1 - 2 . 68. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, p. 499; Azari, Khiabani. 69. Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, pp. 2 3 9 - 2 4 0 ; and Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, pp. 4 1 7 - 4 1 8 . 7 0 . Sh. A. T a g i y e v a , "The National L i b e r a t i o n M o v e m e n t in Persian Azerbaijan, 1917-1920." Translated synopsis of the first two chapters of a book by the same n a m e in Central Asian Review 6, no. 3 (1958): pp. 3 4 7 - 3 5 6 . Also sec "The Tabriz Uprising of 1920." An abridged translation of a book by the author in Central Asian Review 6, no. 4 (1958) pp. 4 3 2 - 4 4 7 , esp. 432. 71. As cited by Abrahamian, Iran, p. 113. 72. Tagiyeva, "Uprising," p. 442; Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, p. 240. 73. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 114. 74. Tagiyeva, "Uprising," pp. 4 3 6 - 4 3 7 , 442. 75. Ibid., p. 4 4 2 . 76. Kasravi, My Life, pp. 8 6 - 9 6 . 7 7 . A n v a r K h a m e i , Panjah Nafar va Se Nafar [Fifty People and Three People] (Tehran: Diba, 1984), pp. 197-201. 78. Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 1, p. 71.

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79. Azari, Khiabani; Kasravi, History of Azerbaijan, pp. 842-851, 858— 896; see also Reiisniya and Nahid, Sattar Khan and Khiabani, pp. 192-270; Tagiyeva, "Uprising," pp. 347-356; Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 1, pp. 34-54; and Hedayat, Memories, pp. 313-322. 80. R a v a s a n i , Gilan Soviet Republic, pp. 248-249; Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, p. 53. 81. Ravasani, Gilan Soviet Republic, p. 126. 82. Ibid., p. 249. 83. Pishevari, in "Tarikh-i Adalat va Dimukrat [History of the Adalat Party and the Democratic Party]," Azhir [Alarm] (June-July 1943); and "Sargozashte Man [My Life]," in Azhir 91 (August 6, 1943); and "Pishevari Kist? [Who is Pishevari?]," in the Tudeh paper Razm, 1, no. 94 (December 4, 1943); and Chaqueri, Avetis Sultanzadeh the Forgotten Revolutionary Theoretician: Life and Works (Tehran: Padzahr, n.d.) pp. 23, 73. 84. Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 3, pp. 3 5 ^ 6 . 85. Quote from Ravasani, Gilan Soviet Republic, p. 253. 86. Ibid., p. 254; and Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, pp. 53, 55. 87. Ravasani, Gilan Soviet Republic, pp. 253-255. 88. Ulyanovsky, Comintern, p. 99. 89. Ibid. 90. For example, see his two books Soveremmenaia Persiia [Contemporary Iran] and Persiia [Iran], 9 1 . Z a b i h , Communist Movement, pp. 11-12; and Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, p. 54.

Ch. 4 Notes 1. Jan M. Meijer, ed., The Trotsky Papers: Vol. 2, 1920-1922 (The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1971), p. 147. 2. Xenia J. Eudin and Robert C. North, eds. Soviet Russia and the East: 1920-1927, A Documentary Survey (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1956), p. 57. 3. Hedayat, Memories, p. 331. 4. Documents on British Foreign Policy, vol. 13, p. 478; Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, p. 42. 5. Quotation from Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader 2d ed. (New York, London: W. W. Norton, 1978), p. 662. See also Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The First Indian War of Independence, 1857-1859 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), pp. 13-19. 6. Lenin, "The Pamphlet by Junius," in Works, vol. 19, p. 204. 7. Lenin, "Three Types of Countries in Relation to Self-Determination of Nations," in Works, vol. 19, p. 55. 8. Joseph V. Stalin, Collected Works. 14 vols. (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1953), vol. 4, pp. 175-176. 9. Fernando Claudin, The Communist Movement: From Comintern to Cominform. 2 vols. Trans. Brian Pearce and Francis Macdonagh. (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1975), pp. 248, 263. 10. See Chaqueri's invaluable compilation, Sultanzadeh, p. 20. 1 1 . V . I. Lenin, On National and Colonial Questions (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), pp. 26-27.

NOTES

243

12. Yegikian, Soviel Union and Jangal, pp. 30-31. 13. Ravasani, Gilan Soviel Republic, p. 57. 14. Harish Kapur, Russia and Asia, p. 168; Yegikian, Soviel Union and Jangal, pp. 41-42; also Louis Fischer, The Soviets in World Affairs (London: Jonathan Cape and Harrison Smith, 1930). 15. Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 3, p. 349. 16. Ibid., vol. 3, pp. 350-351. 17. Jangali, Handwritten Notes, p. 138. 18. Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 3, p. 35. 19. Jangali, Handwritten Notes, p. 139. 20. Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, p. 260; Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, p. 48. 21. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, pp. 51-52, also see pp. 4 8 8 ^ 8 9 , and 558-559. 22. Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, pp. 249-250. 23. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, pp. 78, 91, 99. 24. R. Abikh, "Natsionalnoe i Revoliutsionnoe Dvizhenie v Persii v 1919-1920 gg Vospominaniia Ehsanully Khana [The National and Revolutionary Movement in Persia, 1919-1920: Reminiscences of Ehsanollah Khan]," Novy Vostok 29 (1930): 106. 25. Zabih, Communist Movement, pp. 27-28. 26. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, p. 62. 27. Ibid., pp. 62, 524; and Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, p. 90. 28. Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, p. 251. 29. Ibid., p. 94; also Eudin and North, Russia and the East, p. 181. 30. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, p. 499. 3 1 . F a t e h , Oil, p. 481; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 115. 32. Fateh, Oil, p. 262; Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, p. 110. 33. Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 1, p. 73; and Chaqueri, Sultanzadeh, p. 23; Jane Degras, ed., The Communist International 1919-1943: Documents (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), vol. 1, p. 106. 34. Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, p. 80; Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, p. 125. 35. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, pp. 110-111, 339. 36. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, p. 113. 37. See Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, pp. 61, 63-69; and H. W. V. Temperley, ed., A History of the Peace Conference of Paris. 6 vols. (London: Henry Frowde and Hodder & Stoughton, 1924), vol. 6, p. 216. 38. Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, p. 62. 39. For the Chicherin-Vossugh correspondence, see ibid., pp. 58-61. 40. On British military actions against the Gilan Republic, see Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, p. 98; and Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, pp. 295-296. 41. Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 1, pp. 27-34. 42. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 7 2 - 7 3 ; Makki, Ahmad Shah, pp. 79, 255; Temperley, Peace Conference, vol. 6, p. 211. 43. Norman to Lord Curzon, in Documents on British Foreign Policy, vol. 13, p. 574. 44. Lord Curzon to Norman, in Documents on British Foreign Policy, vol. 13, pp. 584-585. 45. Fatemi, Diplomatic History, pp. 102-120 passim. 46. Ramazani, Foreign Policy of Iran, pp. 174.

244

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4 7 . Documents on British Foreign Policy, vol. 13, p. 7 0 5 . On the Shahsavan, see vol. 13, p. 648. 4 8 . L o u i s F i s c h e r , The Soviets in World Affairs: A History of Relations between the Soviet Union and the Rest of the World. 2 vols. ( L o n d o n : Jonathan C a p e , 1930), p. 4 2 9 . 4 9 . C u r z o n , Persia, vol. 2, p. 621. 5 0 . D e n i s W r i g h t , The English Amongst the Persians (London: H e i n c m a n n , 1977), pp. 1 7 9 - 1 8 5 ; D o n a l d N e w t o n W i l b e r , Riza Shah Pahlavi: The Resurrection and Reconstruction of Iran ( H i c k s v i l l e , N Y : E x p o s i t i o n P r e s s , 1975), pp. 3 9 - 4 7 ; B a h a r , Brief History, p. 95; and M a k k i , Twenty Years' History, vol. 1, pp. 2 2 9 - 2 3 3 and p a s s i m . For N o r m a n ' s c o u n s e l to A h m a d S h a h , s e e Documents on British Foreign Policy, vol. 13, p. 730; s e e a l s o the c o r r e s p o n d e n c e b e t w e e n C u r z o n a n d the B r i t i s h m i n i s t e r in T e h r a n , Sir P e r c y L o r a i n e , c i t e d in H a b i b L a d j e v a r d i , Labor Unions and Autocracy in Iran ( S y r a c u s e : S y r a c u s e U n i v e r s i t y P r e s s , 1985), p p . 9-10. 51. I have yet to discuss Reza Khan with one Iranian who does not share this belief. See also E m i l e Leseur, Les Anglais en Perse [The English in Persia] (Paris: La Renaissance du livre, 1922), pp. 4 4 - 5 0 . 52. M a k k i , Twenty Years' History, vol. 1, p. 249; G a r k a n i , Soviet Government in Iran, p. 84. 5 3 . Documents on British Foreign Policy, vol. 13, pp. 732, 735. 54. Ibid., vol. 13, pp. 736, 7 4 3 . 55. For Persian text of the entire treaty, see Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, pp. 1 2 3 - 1 2 9 . An English translation of Articles 5 and 6 is in G e o r g e L e n c z o w s k i , Russia and the West in Iran, 1918-1948 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1949), pp. 3 1 7 - 3 1 8 . 56. M a k k i , Twenty Years' History, vol. 1, p. 254. Policy, 57. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 2 9 9 - 3 0 2 , 3 7 2 - 3 7 4 . Also R a m a z a n i , Foreign pp. 189-190. 58. S h u s t e r , The Strangling of Persia, p a s s i m ; M a k k i , Twenty Years' History, vol. 1, pp. 4 1 0 , 6 2 8 - 6 2 9 ; a n d O c t o b e r 6, 1986, t e l e p h o n e interview with Ali Amini. 59. J a n u a r y 18, 1987, t e l e p h o n e interview w i t h Ali A m i n i , w h o said Q a v a m and M o s s a d e g h had given him this information. 60. B a l f o u r , Recent Happenings, pp. 2 5 8 - 2 6 1 . 6 1 . N a i s r o l l a h S a i f p o u r F a t e m i , Oil Diplomacy (New York: Whittier Books, 1954), p . 113. 62. U . S . D e p a r t m e n t of State, Foreign Relations, 1921. 2 vols. (1946), vol. 2, p. 654. 63. As quoted by Fatemi, Oil Diplomacy, p. 114. 64. Q u o t e d in ibid., p. 113. 65. B r i d g e m a n to Q a v a m , in U . S . Department of State, Foreign Relations, 1921, vol. 2, p. 651. 66. F a t e h , Oil, p. 334; Fatemi, Oil Diplomacy, p. 110. 67. F a t e h , Oil, p p . 3 3 4 - 3 3 5 . 68. F a t e m i , Oil Diplomacy, pp. 1 2 5 - 1 2 9 . 6 9 . U . S . D e p a r t m e n t of State, United States Foreign Documents, 1923 3 vols. ( W a s h i n g t o n , D C : U . S . G o v e r n m e n t Printing O f f i c e , 1946), vol. 3, p. 655. 7 0 . Dietrich G e y e r , Die Sowjet Union und Iran: Eine Untersuchung zur Aussenpolitik der U.D.S.S.R. in Nahen Osten, 1917-1954 [The Soviet Union and

NOTES

245

Iran: An Examination of Soviet Foreign Policy in the Near East, 1917-1954] (Tubingen: Bohlau-Verlag Köln/Graz, 1955), p. 28. 7 1 . F a t e m i , Oil Diplomacy, p. 111. 72. Kapur, Russia and Asia, pp. 189-194; Eudin and North, Russia and the East, p. 102. 73. On the Soviets' initial support for Reza Khan, see Bahar, [Brief History of the Political Parties of Iran], vol. 2, p. 72; R. A. U l y a n o v s k y , e d . , The Comintern and the East: A Critique of the Critique, pp. 3 1 6 - 3 1 8 ; and Lenczowski, Russia and the West in Iran, pp. 8 6 - 9 1 . See also Edward H. Carr, The Bolshevik Revolution 1917Socialism 1923. 3 vols. (London: MacMillan, 1950-1953), vol. 3, p. 464; and in One Country 3 vols. (New York: MacMillan, 1958-1964), vol. 3, pp. 6 4 4 649. 74. V. I. Lenin, Against Right-Wing and Left-Wing Opportunism, Against Trotskyism (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975), p. 435. 75. Chaqueri, Sultanzadeh, p. 41; Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 128 -129; Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 2, p. 287; and October 6, 1986, telephone interview with Ali Amini. 76. Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 128-129. 77. Ibid., p. 129. 78. As cited in M. Reza Ghods, "A Comparative Historical Study of the Causes, Development, and Effects of Ihe Revolutionary Movements in Northern Iran in 1920-21 and 1945^*6" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Denver, 1988), p. 245. 7 9 . Documents on British Foreign Policy, Series IA. 1 vols. W. N. Medlicott, Douglas Dakin, and M. E. Lambert, eds. (London: Her Majesty's Stationery Office, 1968), vol. 2, p. 821. 80. Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, pp. 356-361. 8 1 . K a r i m Sanjabi, in his June 27, 1987, interview with the author. On Mossadegh's early belief in "positive equilibrium," I am also indebted to the January 18, 1987, interview with Ali Amini. 82. On the Soviets' enthusiasm for the new Iranian policy, see Chicherin(?) in Eudin and North, Russia and the East, p. 194. 83. Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, pp. 359-360. 84. See Iransky, "Russko Persitskiye Otnoshenia za Piat Let [Five Years of Iran-Soviet Relations]," Novy Vostok 4 (1923):218. 85. Preamble to treaty with Turkey, in Eudin and North, Russia and the East, p. 102. 86. M. Pavlovich, V. Teriya, and S. Iransky, Engelabeh Mashrutiate Iran va Rishe haye Ejtemayi va Egtesadi An [The Iranian Constitutional Revolution and its Economic and Social Roots], Trans, from Russian by M. Hushiyar. (Tehran: n.p., 1950), pp. 142-143; M. Pavlovich and M. Iransky, Persiya va Borbye za Nezavisimost [Persia in the Struggle for Independence] (Moscow: Godzidat, 1925). 87. Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 10, pp. 85-122; also see Sultanzadeh's work in vols. 4, 8, and 20. 88. Lenczowski, Russia and the West, p. 134. 89. Chaqueri, Sultanzadeh, p. 40. 90. British Foreign Policy, Series IA, vol. 1, p. 865. 91. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 775-777. 92. Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, p. 72; and Lenczowski, Russia and the West, pp. 86-91.

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Ch. 5 Notes 1. Chaqueri, Sultanzadeh, pp. 16, 18. 2. Ibid., pp. 14, 16; the quotation is from p. 14. 3. Ibid., pp. 2 0 - 2 1 . 4. Ibid., vol. 4, p. 100; and Avetis Sultanzadeh, Persiia (Moscow: Godzidat, 1924), p. 86; Avetis Sultanzadeh, Sovermenniya Persiia [Contemporary Iran] (Moscow: Godzidat, 1922), pp. 59-60. 5. Y e g i k i a n , Soviet Union and Jangal, p. 150; C h a q u e r i , Soviet 1921-1929 Initiatives, p. 49; Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Unarmed: Trotsky, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), p. 475. 6. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, pp. 162-206. 7. Ibid., pp. 93, 149-150, 504. 8. Ibid., pp. 150-151; and Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, pp. 2 7 2 - 2 7 3 . 9. On war communism, see Tudeh Party of Iran, Engelabi Oktobr va Iran [The October Revolution and Iran] (Stockholm: Tudch Publishing Center, 1976), p. 271. 10. On government programs in this period, see Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, pp. 1 6 7 - 1 6 8 , 232, 2 6 4 - 2 6 5 , 333, 344, 3 4 8 - 3 4 9 , 3 5 5 - 3 5 6 , and passim; Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, p. 273; Ivanov, History, Ehsan Tabari, Ozaye Iran dar Dorane Moaser: Jahanbini va Jonbesh haye Ejtemaii dar Iran [The Contemporary Situation in Iran: World Outlooks and Social Movements in Iran] 2 vols. ( S t o c k h o l m : T u d e h P u b l i s h i n g C e n t e r , 1977), vol. 2, p p . 3 8 - 3 9 ; Ulyanovsky, Comintern, p. 100; Rostislav Ulyanovsky, ed., The Revolutionary Process in the East: Past and Present. Trans. Galina Glagoleva (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1985), p. 230. Ismail Jangali, in Handwritten Notes, pp. 167 and 191, discusses the fatwa and other aspects of society in revolutionary Gilan. On the closure of mosques, see Amir Parvis Pouyan and M. Mani, Iran: Three Essays on Imperialism, the Revolutionary Left, and the Guerrilla Movement (Berlin: M a z d a k , 1971), p. 54. On the confiscation of peasants' horses, see Ravasani, Gilan Soviet Republic, p. 300; Ahrar, Man from Jangal, pp. 4 0 8 ^ 1 0 . For this account of the red government's policies, the author is also indebted to interviews with former members of the Jangal party. 1 1 . M . Mohsen Sadr, Khaterate Sadr al-Ashraf [Memories of Sadr al-Ashraf] (Tehran: Vahid, 1986), p. 256; Pavlovich in Ulyanovsky, Revolutionary Process, pp. 2 2 9 - 2 3 0 . 12. See Kazemi and Abrahamian, "Peasantry"; Abrahamian, Iran. 13. S e e I r a n d u s t [pseud.], " V o p r o s y Gilanskoi Revoliutsii [Questions Regarding the Gilan Revolution]," Istorik Marxist 5 (1927): 1 4 3 - 1 4 4 . 14. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, p. 87 and passim; and August 4, 1986, interview with former members of the Jangal party. 15. Irandust, "Gilan R e v o l u t i o n , " esp. pp. 1 3 5 - 1 3 6 ; Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, and August 4, 1986, interview with former members of the Jangal party. 16. Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, pp. 3 1 9 - 3 2 0 . 17. Jangali, Handwritten Notes, pp. 187-188. 18. Fatemi, Diplomatic History, p. 168. 19. Ra'in, Haydar Khan, pp. 3 6 7 - 3 7 3 . 20. Fatemi, Diplomatic History, p. 172; Baku: Congress of the Peoples of the East, September 1920. Trans, and ed. Brian Pearce (New York: L a b o r Publications, 1977), p. 140. 21. Chaqueri, Sultanzadeh, pp. 7 4 - 7 5 .

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247

22. Ra'in, Haydar Khan, p. 379. 23. Ibid., p. 378. 24. Ibid., pp. 379-380; Chaqueri, Sultanzadeh, p. 37. 25. Ra'in, Haydar Khan, p. 379. 26. Ibid., pp. 3 7 6 - 3 7 7 , 3 8 5 - 3 8 6 . 27. Ibid., pp. 345-346; and Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 20, p. 9. 28. Chaqueri, Sultanzadeh, p. 65; and Ra'in, Haydar Khan, p. 366. 29. Chaqueri, Sultanzadeh, pp. 74-75; Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 1, p. 78. 30. Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 19, p. 12; see also Louis Fischer, The Life of Lenin, 1st ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 421; Louis Fischer, Men An Autobiography (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946) and Politics: p. 136. 31. Stalin, Works, vol. 5, p. 318. 32. Fischer, Life of Lenin, p. 421. 33. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangai, and August 4, 1986, interview with Malik. 34. Zabih, Communist Movement, p. 37; Fakhraii, Commander of Jangai, p. 329. 35. Fakhraii, Commander of Jangai, pp. 326-328. On Haydar's origins see Ra'in, Haydar Khan, pp. 3 - 1 9 passim. 36. Zabih, Communist Movement, p. 38. 37. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangai, p. 502. 38. Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 19, p. 23; Ra'in, Haydar Khan, p. 367; Tabari, Contemporary Situation, p. 39. 39. Fakhraii, Commander of Jangai, p. 329. 40. Ra'in, Haydar Khan, pp. 327-328; Jangali, Handwritten Notes, pp. 217-218. 41. Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangai, p. 137; and Tagiyeva, "Uprising," pp. 4 3 2 - 4 4 7 . 42. Ra'in, Haydar Khan, p. 367. 43. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 119. On Lahuti's revolt, see Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 2, pp. 9 - 2 3 , which includes an eyewitness account of this revolt; and Fakhraii, Commander of Jangai, p. 403. 4 4 . A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 119; Ivanov, History, p. 50; Ja'far Majidi, "Giyami Khorasan va Darshayi An [The Revolt of Khorasan and Its Lessons]," Donya 7, ser. 2, no. 4:101-108; and Ali Azari, Giyami Colonel Mohammad Tagi Khan-i Pesyan dar Khorasan [The Revolt of Colonel Pesyan in Khorasan] (Tehran: Marvi, 1973). 45. Ahrar, Man from Jangai, p. 526. For an epic eyewitness account with excellent documentation, see Azari, Revolt of Pesyan, pp. 262-263 and passim. 46. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 119; Majidi, "Revolt of Khorasan." 47. Jangali, Handwritten Notes, pp. 213-215. 48. Ibid., pp. 219-220; Fakhraii, Commander of Jangai, pp. 365-372; and letter from Ardeshir Ovanessian to the author, dated November 24, 1988. 49. Jangali, Handwritten Notes, p. 167; Ahrar, Man from Jangai, pp. 5 0 2 503; and Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, p. 61. 50. A. N. Kheiftes, Sovietskaya Diplomatiya Iranoda Vostoka [Soviet Diplomacy and Oriental Peoples] (Moscow: Publishing House of Science, 1968), pp. 6 0 - 6 5 , esp. p. 65; Fischer, Soviets in World Affairs, vol. 1, pp. 288-291, 4 2 8 - 4 3 2 ; Fischer, Men and Politics, pp. 136-137; Fateh, Oil, p. 482; Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangai, pp. 320-324; and Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, pp. 9 9 - 1 0 0 .

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

51. On the final collapse of the Gilan Republic, see Zabih, Communist Movement, p. 40; Jangali, Handwritten Notes, p. 220; Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, pp. 3 7 1 - 3 8 3 ; Ahrar, Man from Jangai, p. 526; and Fischer, Life of Lenin, p. 427. On British support for the suppression of Gilan, see Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 4, p. 19 fn. 51. 52. Ra'in, Haydar Khan, pp. 2 3 8 - 2 3 9 . 53. On the alienation of the population, see Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangai, Fakhraii, Commander of Jangal, pp. 4 0 4 - 4 1 5 . 54. See Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal. 55. See V. Zotov, Lenin's Doctrine on National Liberation Revolutions and the Modern World (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1983). 56. See Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal, Majidi, "Revolt of Khorasan." 57. Azari, Revolt of Pesyan, pp. 4 4 1 ^ 4 2 ; and Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, p. 159; Makki, Ahmad Shah, p. 80. 58. G a r k a n i , Soviet Government in ¡ran, pp. 1 0 1 - 1 0 2 ; Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, pp. viii-ix. 59. On these accomplishments, see Ra'in, Haydar Khan, p. 367; Yegikian, Soviet Union and Jangal. 60. U l y a n o v s k y , Comintern, p. 315; also Fischer, Life of Lenin, pp. 4 2 0 421. 61. Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 4, pp. 119-135; Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, pp. 2 5 0 - 2 5 4 ; and Sultanzadeh in Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 8, p p . 1 6 1 - 1 6 6 . See also S u l t a n z a d e h , Persiia, C h . 6, " O b s h c h e s t e n n o e D v i z h e n i e v Persii. Borba Protiv Imperialisticheskikh Z a k h v a t c h i k o v [WellKnown Movements in Persia, War Against Imperialist Aggressors]," pp. 7 6 - 9 1 .

Ch. 6 Notes 1. Ahmad Kasravi, Emruz Cheh Bayad Kard? [What Must Be Done Now?] (Tehran: Parcham, 1942), pp. 3 6 - 3 7 . 2. Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 1, p. 255. 3. Mirza Hassan Taqizadeh, "Modern Persia," Journal of the Royal Society of Arts 32 (July 27, 1934):968. Years' 4. G a r k a n i , Soviet Government in Iran, p. 102; Makki, Twenty History, vol. 1, pp. 5 6 0 - 5 6 1 . 5. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 129, 139; Lenczowski, Russia and the West, p. 104; Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 3, pp. 130-131. 6. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 127-128; Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, pp. 1 6 27; Lenczowski, Russia and the West, p. 104; Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 3, pp. 130-131. 7. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 1 2 0 - 1 2 1 ; Bahar, Brief History, vol. 1, p. 306; vol. 2, p. 27. 8. Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 1, pp. 4 5 0 - 4 5 3 . 9. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 131. 10. H o m a y o u n K a t o u z i a n , " N a t i o n a l i s t T r e n d s in Iran: 1 9 2 1 - 1 9 2 6 , " International Journal of Middle East Studies 10 (November 1979):551, and his introduction in Khalil Maleki, Khaterate Siyasi [Political Memories] (Tehran: Ravag, 1981), pp. 2 2 - 2 5 . 11. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 1 2 2 - 1 2 3 . 12. M a k k i , Twenty Years' History, vol. 3, pp. 3 0 4 - 3 3 0 ; S a f a v i ,

NOTES

249

R a h i m z a d e h . Asrare Sugute Ahmad Shah [Secrets of Ahmad Shah's Collapse] (Tehran: Ferdousi Publishing, nd), pp. 19-125 passim; Hedayat, Memories, p. 359; and Makki, Ahmad Shah passim. 13. M a k k i , Twenty Years' History, vol. 2, pp. 3 4 2 - 3 4 3 . On the connection with Turkey, sec Sykes, History of Iran, vol. 2, p. 830. 14. Bahar, Brief History, Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 3, pp. 3 3 0 335. 15. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 134; Sykes, History of Iran, vol. 2, p. 830. 16. Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 3, pp. 330-341. 17. Hussein Makki, ed., Dr. Mossadegh va Notghaye Tarikhiye Oo [Dr. Mossadegh and His Historical Speeches] (Tehran: Javidan, 1979), pp. 46-52. 18. Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 3, pp. 526, 535; Maleki, Political Memories, p. 25. 19. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 135; Maleki, Political Memories, p. 25. 20. Azari, Revolt of Pesyan, pp. 428-438 and passim. 21. Makki, Ahmad Shah, pp. 223-225. 22. Hedayat, Memories, p. 425. 23. Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 4, pp. 39-43, 46-50. 24. Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 4 2 - 4 4 . 25. Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, p. 265. 26. Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 81-100; Hassan Arfa, The Kurds: An Historical and Political Study (London: Oxford University Press, 1966), pp. 53-63. 27. Makki, Twenty Years' History, vols. 2-5; Bahar, Brief History, vols. 1 - 2 ; Ibrahim Kajehnouri, Bazigarane Asre Talaiyi [Actors of the Golden Era]: Davar, Teymourtash, Ayrom, Amir Tahmasebi, Dashti (Tehran: Sepehr, 1978), pp. 106-157. 28. M a k k i , Twenty Years' History, vol. 2, pp. 80-81; Lucien Rambout, Les Kurdes et le droit [The Kurds and the Law] (Paris: Editions du cerf, 1947), p. 96; Makki, Mossadegh Speeches, p. 13. 29. Sykes, History of Iran, pp. 830-832. 30. See Arthur Millspaugh, Americans in Persia (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1946). 31. Vincent Sheean, The New Persia (London: Century, 1927), pp. 170, 174; Fateh, Oil, pp. 467-469. 32. Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, p. 72, paraphrasing Comrade Davitian, the Soviet minister in Tehran. 33. Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 4, pp. 15, 34-35. 34. Ibid., vol. 4, pp. 15-16, 34. 35. Hassan Arfa, Under Five Shahs (London: John Murray, 1964), p. 279. 36. Pishevari, in Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 3, pp. 130-131; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 128, 138-139; and Reza Arasteh, "Struggle for Equality in Iran," Middle East Journal 18 (Spring 1964): 194; Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, pp. 31-33; Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 4, p. 111. 37. See Kajehnouri, Actors-, Makki, Twenty Years' History, vols. 4 - 5 ; on the C o m m u n i s t Party see Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 1, p. 102. See also Abrahamian, Iran, p. 139. 38. See Kajehnouri, Actors', Makki, Twenty Years' History, vols. 4 - 5 . 39. Banani, The Modernization of Iran, 1921-1941. Stanford University Press, 1961, p. 147. 40. Anonymous, Ala'hazrat Reza Shah-i Kabir [His Imperial Majesty Reza Shah the Great] (Falls Church, VA: Sarbaz, 1982), p. 11; see Violet Conolly's

250

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

astute "The Industrialization of Persia," Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society (July 1935):461. 41. Ibid., pp. 459, 462; and A. C. Edwards, "Persia R e v i s i t e d , " International Affairs 23, no. 1 (January 1947):53; on the shah's ownership of all factories, see William S. Hass, Iran (New York: Columbia University Press, 1946), p. 152. 42. Banani, Modernization, pp. 144-145. 43. Ibid., p. 131; see Donald Newton Wilber, Riza Shah Pahlavi: The Resurrection and Reconstruction of Iran (Hicksville, NY: Exposition Press, 1975), p. 145—a sympathetic biography; also Millspaugh, Americans in Persia, p. 31; Conolly, "Industrialization," pp. 459, 462—463. 44. Conolly, "Industrialization," p. 460; and Millspaugh, Americans in Persia, p. 30. 45. Arfa, Under Five Shahs, p. 285; and Banani, Modernization, pp. 116117. 46. Arfa, Under Five Shahs, p. 286; Millspaugh, Americans in Persia, pp. 27-28; Homayoun Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran, 1926-1979 (New York: New York University Press, 1981) p. 112. 47. Conolly, "Industrialization," p. 461. 48. Ibid., pp. 456-457; Makki, Mossadegh Speeches, pp. 123-162; and Bruce Hopper, "The Persian Regenesis: Key to Politics in the Middle East," Foreign Affairs 13, no. 2 (January 1935):300-301. 49. January 18, 1987, telephone interview with Ali Amini. 50. Wilber, Pahlavi, p. 245; also Anonymous, Gozashteh Cherag i Rahi Ayandeh Ast [The Past is the Torch for the Future] (Tehran: Jami, 1976), pp. 88, 95. 51. Conolly, "Industrialization," esp. pp. 4 5 8 - 4 5 9 . 52. On the strategic importance of the railroad, see ibid., p. 456 and passim; and Hopper, "Persian Regenesis," pp. 300-301. 53. Banani, Modernization, p. 135; Hopper, "Persian Regenesis," p. 300; Arfa, Under Five Shahs, p. 289. 54. Millspaugh, Americans in Persia, p. 25; Soraya Esfandiyari, Khaterat-i Malekeh Soraya [Memories of Queen Soraya]. Trans, by Mosamajdi (n.p.: Seadat, n.d.), p. 31. On the large scale of extortions, see the discussions of post-World War II protests and lawsuits in Torch for the Future, pp. 88-120; also Lutfali Barimani, Asrari Amlak-i Shahanshahi [Secrets of the Royal Estates] (Tehran: Danesh, n.d.). 55. Arfa, Under Five Shahs, p. 282. 56. Barimani, Secrets. Also Millspaugh, Americans in Persia, p. 25; and Benani, Modernization, pp. 119-129. 57. Banani, Modernization, p. 57; Conolly, "Industrialization," p. 460; Bahar, Brief History, vol. 2, p. 319; Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 23. 58. Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 4, pp. 415-437. 59. B a n a n i , Modernization, p. 56; and Khosrow Ruzbeh, Eta'ate Korkoraneh [Blind Subordination] (Tehran: n.p., n.d. [1945-1946?]), passim, esp. pp. 1-21. 60. Benani, Modernization, p. 56. 61. Hopper, "Persian Regenesis," p. 298; Fatemi, USSR in Iran, p. 26. 62. Joseph S. Szyliowicz, Education and Modernization in the Middle East (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973), p. 231; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 127; Ruzbeh, Subordination, passim, esp. pp. 1-21; A. Ardekani, "National Hero of the People of Iran: Pages from History," World Marxist Review 5, no. 10

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251

(October 1962):94-97, esp. pp. 9 4 - 9 5 ; Jalal Massah, ed., Matn-i Kamel-i Akarin Defa-i Khosrow Ruzbeh [Complete Proceedings of the Last D e f e n s e of Khosrow Ruzbeh] (Tehran: M a r d o m , 1948); A h m a d Kasravi, Afsarani Ma [Our Officers] (Tehran: Siman, 1944); Kambaksh, Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, pp. 6 - 7 , 2 1 1 - 2 1 9 ; Abulhassan Tafreshiyan, Giyami Afsaran-i Khorasan 1324, [The Revolt of the O f f i c e r s of Khorasan Division, 1945] (Tehran: Alam, 1980), pp. 1 - 4 8 , p a s s i m , esp. p. 38; a s u m m e r 1986 interview in W a s h i n g t o n , DC, with H a s s a n G o m i (pseud.), a f o r m e r active m e m b e r of the T u d e h Party's youth o r g a n i z a t i o n a f t e r World War II provided this a u t h o r with v a l u a b l e information. 63. Szyliowicz, Education and Modernization, pp. 2 3 4 - 2 3 5 , 2 3 8 - 2 3 9 . 64. Information obtained in d i s c u s s i o n s with the Pahlavi-era administrators, including Davudi (pseud.) and with M. Semnani (pseud.), a highranking official under the Pahlavis in the Ministry of Education, in a summer 1985 discussion in Denver. 65. Szyliowicz, Education and Modernization, p. 231. 66. The author's father, M. Ghods, was one such graduate of an agricultural school w h o was f o r c e d to serve on the royal estates; this i n f o r m a t i o n was obtained in a April 6, 1987, letter to the author. Several civil servants w h o served on the royal estates confirmed this information. 67. Szyliowicz, Education and Modernization, p. 251. 68. Pesyan, p. 25; see also Marvin Zonis, The Political Elite of Iran (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971). 69. Banani, Modernization, p. 71. 70. K a j e h n o u r i , Actors, pp. 18-20. 71. Banani, Modernization, p. 78; and Abrahamian, Iran, p. 215. 72. Banani, Modernization, p. 73. 73. See Hedayat (who was prime minister at this time), Memories, pp. 3 9 4 - 3 9 6 ; Fatemi, Oil Diplomacy, p. 171. 74. Ibrahim Kajehnouri, Bazigarane Asre Talaiyi: Ali Soheiii [Actors of the Golden Era: Ali Soheiii] (Tehran: Javidan, 1977), p. 53. 75. Torch for the Future, p. 62. 76. L e n c z o w s k i , Russia and the West, p. 161; Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 143; letter from A. Z. Arabajan, September 27, 1988. 77. A n n L a m b t o n , "Persia," Journal of the Royal Central Asian Society, 31, no. 1 (January 1944): 16; and Lenczowski, Russia and the West, pp. 154, 161. 78. Szyliowicz, Education and Modernization, p. 243; and interviews with Semnani (pseud.) and a few other officials in the Ministry of Education under the Pahlavis. 79. Szyliowicz, Education and Modernization, p. 242. 80. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 163. 8 1 . Torch for the Future, p. 240. M y interviews with Moghaddam and other Azerbaijanis, as well as with Semnani (pseud.) from the Department of Education, confirmed that this was indeed official policy. 82. As cited in Torch for the Future, p. 239. 83. July 6, 1986, interview with Tabrizi (pseud.). An interview of the s a m e date with another Azeri, Azeri (pseud.), an Azerbaijani landowner, c o n f i r m e d T a b r i z i ' s a c c o u n t ; o t h e r Azeris p r e s e n t in A z e r b a i j a n at that time h a v e corroborated this. See also William Eagleton, Jr., The Kurdish Republic of 1946 (London: O x f o r d University Press, 1963), pp. 2 5 - 2 6 . 84. R a m b o u t , Kurds and the Law, p. 96; A. R. Ghassemlou, "Kurdistan in

252

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

I r a n , " in G e r a r d C h a l i a n d , e d . , People Without a Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan. T r a n s . M i c h a e l Pallis ( L o n d o n : Z e d Press, 1980), p. 119. 8 5 . L e n c z o w s k i , Russia and the West, p . 155; K a t o u z i a n , Political Economy, p . 133. 86. S e e A d i b i , New Middle Class, p. 81 fn. 8 7 . A b d u l l a h M o u s t o f i , Tarikhe Ejtemayi va Edariye Dureyeh Qajariyeh [ S o c i a l a n d A d m i n i s t r a t i v e H i s t o r y of t h e Q a j a r E r a ] . 3 v o l s . ( T e h r a n : Z a f a r B o o k s t o r e , 1981), v o l . 3, p p . 3 6 7 - 3 6 8 . F a t o l l a h B i n a , Sargozasht-i Reza Shah [ T h e S t o r y of R e z a S h a h ' s L i f e ] ( T e h r a n : P a r v i n , 1943), pp. 7 4 - 7 5 ; and M. R . P a h l a v i , Reza Shah-i Kabir [Reza S h a h t h e G r e a t ] (Tehran: Imperial G o v e r n m e n t of Iran, n . d . ) p. 8 9 — a son's g l o w i n g b i o g r a p h y of his father. 8 8 . As cited b y A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 151; see also E r v a n d A b r a h a m i a n , " C o m m u n i s m and C o m m u n a l i s m in Iran: T h e Tudah and the Firqah-e-Dimukrat," International Journal of Middle East Studies 1 (1970):291-316; Cottam, Nationalism, pp. 124- 125 a n d K a t o u z i a n , Political Economy, p. 133. 8 9 . K a t o u z i a n , Political Economy, p. 133. 9 0 . Torch for the Future, pp. 2 3 7 - 2 3 8 . My own interviews with A z e r b a i j a n i s f r o m a v a r i e t y of social b a c k g r o u n d s c o n f i r m e d this. 9 1 . B a n a n i , Modernization, pp. 1 2 0 - 1 2 5 . 9 2 . M o m e n i , Struggle in Kurdistan, pp. 25-26. 9 3 . F o r t h e d e f i n i t i o n of integral n a t i o n a l i s m , see C h i l c o t e , Comparative Politics, p. 2 7 6 . 9 4 . M a k k i , Twenty Years' History, vol. 6, pp. 2 5 0 - 2 7 3 . 95. Ibid., vol. 6, p p . 2 5 0 - 2 7 9 ; a l s o H u s s e i n K o h i e k e r m a n i , Az Shahrivare bist la Fajeyeh Azerbaijan va Zanjan [ F r o m the E v e n t s of A u g u s t 1941 to the C a l a m i t i e s of A z e r b a i j a n a n d Z a n j a n ] . 2 v o l s . ( T e h r a n : M a z a h c r , 1 9 4 6 - 1 9 4 8 ) , v o l . 1, p p . 4 2 5 - 4 2 7 ; v o l . 2, p p . 1 5 9 - 1 8 1 . 9 6 . S z y l i o w i c z , Education and Modernization, p. 2 4 4 ; S z y l i o w i c z ' s N o v e m b e r 19 s p e e c h , " L e a d e r s h i p S t y l e s a n d D e v e l o p m e n t a l S t r a t e g i e s of Iran's R e z a S h a h a n d T u r k e y ' s A t a t u r k " b e f o r e t h e S o c i e t y for Iranian Studies at D e n v e r U n i v e r s i t y ; a n d s u m m e r 1985 interview w i t h S e m n a n i (pseud.). S e e also W i l l i a m S. H a s s , Iran, p p . 1 5 8 - 1 5 9 . 9 7 . K a j e h n o u r i , Actors', A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 1 5 0 - 1 5 1 ; M a k k i , Twenty Years' History, vols. 5 and 6; a n d Torch for the Future, p. 55. 9 8 . A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 150. 9 9 . O . S. M e l i k o v , Ustanovleniye Diktatury Reza Shakha va Irane [The E s t a b l i s h m e n t of R e z a Shah's D i c t a t o r s h i p in Iran] ( M o s c o w : P u b l i s h i n g H o u s e of O r i e n t a l L i t e r a t u r e , 1961). 100. Ibid., p . 149; S z y l i o w i c z , Education and Modernization, p. 233. 1 0 1 . C o n o l l y , "Industrialization," p. 462. 102. Ibid. 103. S h a j i i , Representatives, p. 195. 104. I v a n o v , History, p . 80; K a t o u z i a n , Political Economy, p. 131. 1 0 5 . G h a s s e m i , Syndicalism, p. 149. 1 0 6 . M a k k i , Twenty Years' History, v o l . 6, p. 3 7 0 ; a n d 1 9 7 6 d i s c u s s i o n with M r . D a v u d i ( p s e u d . ) . 107. C o n o l l y , " I n d u s t r i a l i z a t i o n , " p. 4 6 2 ; M o m e n i , Struggle in Kurdistan, p. 25. 108. L a m b t o n , " P e r s i a , " p. 14. 109. C o t t a m , Nationalism, pp. 9 9 - 1 0 0 . 110. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p . 155. 1 1 1 . Torch for the Future, p p . 6 5 - 6 6 ; on i n v o l v e m e n t in N a z i a c t i v i t y , s e e

NOTES

253

pp. 6 9 - 7 0 of same; Hedayat, Memories, pp. 4 2 5 - 4 2 6 . On Mayr, see Lenczowski, Russia and the West, pp. 163-166. 112. Garkani, Soviet Government in Iran, pp. 2 0 0 - 2 0 1 . 113. See Zabih, Communist Movement., p. 61; Ghassemi, Syndicalism, pp. 1 6 4 - 1 7 1 , on the entire strike. On the PCP's leading role in the oil workers' union, see Kambaksh, Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, pp. 3 6 - 3 7 . 114. As cited in Zabih, Communist Movement, p. 62 fn; see also Ghassemi, Syndicalism, pp. 171-179. 115. C h a q u e r i , Documents, vol. 1, p. 120, vol. 20, pp. 18-19; Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 139-140; and Khamei, Fifty People and Three, p. 70. 116. Azhir 91 (August 6, 1943); as cited in Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 3, p. 131; also Kambaksh, Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, p. 35. 117. M a k k i , Twenty Years' History, vol. 5, p. 182. 118. K h a m e i , Fifty People and Three, pp. 7 1 - 7 5 ; Maleki, Political Memories', and Bozorg Alavi, Panjaho se Nafar [Fifty-Three People] (Tehran: Sepehr, 1978). 119. K h a m e i , Fifty People and Three, pp. 9 4 - 9 5 ; Zabih, Communist Movement, p. 67; Tagi Arani, Asar va Magalat [Works and Articles] 2d ed. (Tehran: n.p., 1978). 120. Nosratollah J a h a n s h a h l o u - A f s h a r , Ma Va Diganegan Sargozasht [We and the Foreigners] (West G e r m a n y : n.p., 1982), pp. 15-18; on the goals of Arani's group, I am also indebted to a D e c e m b e r 8, 1988, telephone interview with Bozorg Alavi. 121. Khamei, Fifty People and Three, p. 99. 122. Ruhollah K. Ramazani, "The Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan and the Kurdish People's Republic: Their Rise and Fall," in Thomas T. Hammond and Robert Farrel, eds., The Anatomy of Communist Takeover (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), p. 458. 123. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 157-162; Alavi, Fifty-Three People, p. 190. 124. Alavi, Fifty-Three People, p. 176. 125. Alavi, Varag Parehayi Zendan [Torn Prison Memoirs] (Tehran, n.p., 1941). 126. Khamei, Fifty People and Three, pp. 173-174. 127. T h e evaluation of Ovanessian's political beliefs is taken from U.S. G o v e r n m e n t , "Who's W h o in the T u d e h P a r t y , " M a r c h 31, 1945, U S N A RG226/126793:5; and December 8, 1988, telephone interview with Bozorg Alavi. 128. Azhir 91 (August 6, 1943), as cited in Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 3, p. 132. On Pishevari's personal rivalries, see Maleki, Political Memories, pp. 3 0 5 306; and Khamei, Fifty People and Three, pp. 172-195. 129. Quoted by Abrahamian in "Communism and Communalism," p. 307. 130. On the influence of the Gilan Revolution in forming Pishevari's tactical a p p r o a c h in the A z e r b a i j a n i r e v o l u t i o n , I am indebted to the i n f o r m a t i v e December 8, 1988, telephone interview with Bozorg Alavi. 131. January 18, 1987, telephone interview with Ali Amini; Sultanzadeh in Chaqueri, Documents, vols. 4, 8, 29, passim. 132. L e n c z o w s k i , Russia and the West, p. 95; Edward H. Carr, Socialism in One Country 1924-1926. 3 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1 9 5 8 - 1 9 6 4 ) , vol. 3, pp. 6 3 5 - 6 3 6 ; and Kapur, Russia and Asia, p. 198. 133. For Mossadegh's objections in the Sixth Majlis, see Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 4, pp. 163-167. 134. Center for Collecting Documents, comp. and ed., Alahazrat Reza Shah-i Kabir [His Imperial Majesty Reza Shah the Great] (Tehran: Foreign Ministry of

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Iran, 1976), pp. 103-104, 108-115; Benani, Modernization, pp. 57, 134; Fatemi, Oil Diplomacy. 135. Ramazani, Foreign Policy, p. 255; Fateh, Oil, pp. 290-307; Fatemi, Oil Diplomacy, pp. 151-183; and March 27, 1987, telephone interview with Ali Amini. 136. Katouzian, "Nationalist Trends," p. 540. 137. Ivanov, History, p. 90. 138. Ramazani, Foreign Policy, p. 274. For the full text of the treaty, see the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Documents on International Affairs, 1937 (London: Oxford University Press, 1939), pp. 531-532; on the Iran-Iraq treaty, see Hussein Sirriyeh, "Development of the Iraqi-Iranian Dispute, 18471975," Journal of Contemporary History 20, no. 3 (July 1985):484 and passim. The Amini quotation is from the March 27, 1987, telephone interview. 139. L e n c z o w s k i , Russia and the West, pp. 161-163; Ivanov, History, p. 91. 140. Kajehnouri, Ali Soheili, pp. 34-35. 141. Ivanov, History, p. 91. 142. Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 6, pp. 289-315, 4 1 4 - 4 3 5 . On Soviet views, see Ivanov, History, p. 90. 143. Makki, Twenty Years' History, vol. 6, pp. 451-454. 144. Mahdavi, [The History of Iran's Foreign Policy], pp. 4 0 1 - 4 0 4 ; the Churchill quotation is from Churchill, The Second World War. 5 vols. (New York: Bantam Books, 1950), vol. 3, The Grand Alliance, p. 408. 145. Mahdavi, Foreign Relations, pp. 403—404. 146. Kajehnouri, Ali Soheili, pp. 55-56, 68-70. 147. See Ja'far Pishevari, Yaddashthayi Zendan [Prison Memoirs] (n.p., n.d), p. 52, where Pishevari mentions General Jahanbani, who was thrown into prison for suggesting that Iran could not resist foreign invasion: a case in point. 148. Kajehnouri, Ali Soheili, pp. 79-81. 149. Ibid., pp. 131-134; citation from Torch for the Future, p. 83; Abdul Rafi Hagigat, Tarikhe Gomes [History of Gomes] (Tehran: Ettcla'at Newspaper, 1965), p. 181. 150. Millspaugh, Americans in Persia, p. 36. 151. Kazemzadeh, "Ideological Crisis in Iran," in Walter Laqueur, ed., The Middle East in Transition (New York: Praeger, 1958), p. 199.

Ch. 7 Notes 1. Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 98; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 175. 2. Cited in Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 98. 3. Moghaddam, October 24, 1986, letter to the author. 4. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 176; also March 31, 1987, interview with Moghaddam and summer 1986 interviews with various Azeris in the United States. 5. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 176. 6. Kohiekermani, Events of August 1941, vol. 2, p. 44; Arfa, Kurds, p. 72; Chris Kutschra, Kurdestan va Jumhuriye Mahabad [Kurdistan and the Mahabad Republic], Trans. Nahid Bahmanpour. (n.p. [Europe]: Kurdish Democratic Party, 1981), p. 10. 7. Rambout, Kurds and the Law, p. 97. 8. Ibid., pp. 2 4 - 2 5 .

NOTES

255

9. Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, pp. 3 3 - 3 4 ; also see U S N A 8 9 1 . 0 0 / 5 - 5 4 5 CS/MAJ. On the Hewa party, see Kutschra, Mahabad Republic, p. 15. 10. A b r a h a m i a n , ¡ran, p. 175. 1 1 . A r f a , Kurds, p. 72; Kohiekermani, Events of August 1941, vol. 2, pp. 4 4 - 4 9 ; Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, pp. 30-32. 12. K o h i e k e r m a n i , Events of August 1941, vol. 2, pp. 2 3 9 - 3 9 5 ; Torch for the Future, pp. 153-159. 13. Quoted in Abrahamian, Iran, p. 187. 14. Quoted in ibid., p. 218. 15. A h m a d Kasravi, Shiagari [Shi'ism] (Paris: Noor, 1982), pp. 2 0 - 2 3 ; see also Ahmad Kasravi, Dar Piramun-i Islam [About Islam]. 5th ed. (Tehran: Parcham, n.d.). 16. Interview with Sanjabi, June 27, 1987. 17. I b i d . 18. Ja'far Mehdiniya, Zendegiye Siyasiye Razmara [The Political Life of Razmara] (Tehran: Pasargard, 1984), pp. 403^404. 19. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 193; Torch for the Future, p. 172. 20. K o h i e k e r m a n i , Events of August 1941, vol. 2, p. 621; and as cited in Torch for the Future, pp. 185, 189, 268. 21. On Firuz and his association with Seyyed Zia, see Mehdiniya, Razmara, p. 401; also Moghaddam's July 28, 1986, letter to the author. 22. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 290, as cited in Torch for the Future, p. 180; also interviews with several T u d e h m e m b e r s , some of w h o m attended the conference. 23. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 285. 24. Ibid., p. 287; Zabih, Communist Movement, p. 73. 25. As cited in Torch for the Future, p. 180; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 290; also interviews with former T u d e h m e m b e r s , s o m e of w h o m attended the conference. 26. A h m a d Ghassemi, Hizbe Tudeheye Iran Che Miguyad va Che Mikahad? [What Does the Tudeh Party of Iran Say, and What Does it Want?] (Tehran: Tudeh Party, 1944), p p . 9 - 1 0 . 27. "The Tudeh Party and One-Sided Foreign Policy," Rahbar 280 (May 7, 1944). 28. Noruldin Kianouri, Hizb-i Tudeyeh Iran va Dr Mohammad Mossadegh [The Tudeh Party of Iran and Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh] (Tehran: Tudeh, 1980), pp. 5 - 6 . 29. July 10, 1986, interview with A. Tehrani (pseud.), Washington, DC. 30. A n v a r K h a m e i , Forsate Bozorge az Dast Rafteh [The Great Lost O p p o r t u n i t y ] ( T e h r a n : Diba, 1984), pp. 1 2 3 - 1 2 4 ; K a m b a k s h , Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, pp. 2 1 1 - 2 2 0 ; and March 31, 1987, interview with Colonel Sarab (pseud.), an administrative liaison between the Tudeh and the Tudeh military network. 31. Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, pp. 30-32. 32. Ibid., p. 32; Kohiekermani, Events of August 1941, vol. 2, pp. 4 5 8 472; Torch for the Future, p. 184; and June 28, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 33. K a m b a k s h , Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, p. 82. 34. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 375-382, Kambaksh citation, p. 381; Torch for the Future, p. 181; Kambaksh, Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, p. 69; and interviews with various Tudeh members. 35. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 3 8 7 - 3 9 7 ; Momeni, Struggle in Kurdistan, p. 78; U S N A RG 226 OSS 132227, p. 4.

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

3 6 . A b r a h a m i a n , " C o m m u n i s m and C o m m u n a l i s m , " p p . 301-302; Ghassemi, Syndicalism, p. 149; and Rahbar 365 (August 21, 1944):1. 37. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 389. 38. Ibid., p. 387. 39. K o h i e k e r m a n i , Events of August 1941, vol. 2, p. 621; Torch for the Future, pp. 2 4 2 - 2 4 3 , 289. 40. Cited in Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 3, pp. 140-141. 41. Quoted by Abrahamian, Iran, p. 290; see also Torch for the Future, p. 246. 42. L a d j e v a r d i , Labor Unions, p. 46. 43. Ibid., p p . 1 0 0 - 1 0 1 . 44. As cited in ibid., p. 101. 45. Ibid, pp. 47, 102-104; Torch for the Future, p. 184. 46. L a d j e v a r d i , Labor Unions, p. 51. 47. Ibid., p. 48. 4 8 . K a m b a k s h , Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, pp. 6 8 - 6 9 ; Torch for the Future, pp. 174-175; Kiostovan, Negative Equilibrium, vol. 1, pp. 3 7 6 - 4 0 1 ; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 198; and U S N A R&A report 2707 microfiche, p. 27; and 1976 discussion in Tehran with Rahimi (pseud., an interior ministry official during World War II) about the elections for the Fourteenth Majlis; and June 28, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 49. As cited by Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 101. 50. A b r a h a m i a n , ¡ran, pp. 2 9 1 - 2 9 2 . 51. K i o s t o v a n , Negative Equilibrium, vols. 1 and 2; Eaglelon, Kurdish Republic, p. 31. 52. See the fascinating book by Fereydoun Kcshavarz, Man Muttaham Mikonam [I Accuse] (Tehran: Khalq, 1978), p. 34. In 1987 correspondence with the author, Keshavarz reiterated his high regard for Pishevari as an experienced Marxist. 53. Torch for the Future, p. 178; Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 110. 54. K i o s t o v a n , Negative Equilibrium, vol. 1, pp. 3 8 4 - 3 8 6 . 55. M a l e k i , Political Memories, p. 306; and March 31, 1987, interview with Colonel Sarab (pseud.), an early member of the Tudeh military network and a personal friend of Khosrow Ruzbeh. Sarab, an observer at the First Party Congress, told the author that these differences were the cornerstone of the ADP-Tudeh split. 56. Maleki, Political Memories, pp. 3 6 4 - 3 7 4 . 57. Ibid., p p . 3 7 3 - 3 7 4 ; A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 294, 392; A b r a h a m i a n , " C o m m u n i s m and C o m m u n a l i s m , " p p . 3 0 3 - 3 0 4 ; and Rahbar 367 (August 22, 1944): 1, 4. 58. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 294, 392; and Rahbar 3 6 4 - 3 6 7 (August 20, 1 9 4 4 - A u g u s t 23, 1944). 59. Rahbar 365 (August 21, 1944):1. 60. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 394. 61. A b r a h a m i a n , " C o m m u n i s m and Communalism," pp. 3 0 0 - 3 0 4 ; on the First C o n g r e s s , see K a m b a k s h , Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, pp. 69-75. 62. H o m a y o u n p o u r , Azerbaïdjan, p. 50; Torch for the Future, pp. 191-197. 63. "Petroleum in the Near East," U S N A 711.90/69, March 16, 1943. 64. Quoted by Bruce Robellet Kuniholme, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East: Great Power Conflict and Diplomacy in ¡ran, Turkey, and Greece (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 160.

NOTES

257

65. Ibid., pp. 169-179. 66. Barry Rubin, The Great Powers in the Middle East, 1941-1947 (London: Frank Cass, 1980), p. 82. 67. Torch for the Future, pp. 163-169; and October 6, 1986, interview with Ali Amini. 68. Citation in Rubin, Great Powers, pp. 12, 96; Kiostovan, Negative Equilibrium, vol. 1, p. 156; also Mchdi Davoudi, Qavam al-Saltaneh (Tehran: Kodkari Iran, 1947), p. 28. 69. Cited in Rubin, Great Powers, p. 90. 70. "The Tribal Problem in Iran's Domestic and Foreign Politics," USNA R&A report 2707, p. 8. On British support for the tribes, see Lenczowski, Russia and the West, p. 250. 71. Quoted in Rubin, Great Powers, p. 79. 72. October 6, 1986, interview with Ali Amini. 73. March 1987 interview with Ali Amini. 74. U.S. chargé d'affaires in Moscow to the State Department, November 7, 1944, U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1944, vol. 5, p. 470. 75. C. A. Skrine, The World War in Iran (London: Constable, 1962), p. 227. 76. Homayounpour, Azerbaïdjan, p. 51. 77. "Attitude of the Soviet Press and Radio Toward Iran," USNA R&A report 35223.6. 78. Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 54; Keshavarz, / Accuse, p. 75. 79. Kiostovan, Negative Equilibrium, vol. 1, p. 178; see also vols. 1 and 2. 80. Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 168-169. 81. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 181. 82. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 199; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 213; and Moghaddam's August 11, 1986, letter to the author. 83. K u n i h o l m e , Cold War, p. 172; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 213; and Kiostovan, Negative Equilibrium, vol. 1, pp. 236-237. 84. Khamei, Lost Opportunity, pp. 159-160; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 214. 85. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 215; Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Answer to History (New York: Stein and Day, 1980), p. 75. 86. Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 2 1 5 - 2 1 6 , 220; Kiostovan, Negative Equilibrium, vol. 1, pp. 145-149; vol. 2, pp. 118-169, 289. 87. Kambaksh, Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 2, pp. 212-215; Tafreshiyan, Khorasan Division; Lenczowski, in Russia and the West, p. 239, gives a description that greatly exaggerates the tribal support. See USNA 891.00/ 8-2445, p. 2, August 24, 1945. On religion's role in Khorasan, see USNA R&A report 3523.5, p. 3. Also March 31, 1987, interview with Colonel Sarab (pseud.). 88. Ruzbeh, Subordination, pp. 58-59. 89. Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 55. 90. Kambaksh, Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, p. 186. 91. Ebling report, May 5, 1944, U S N A 891.00/3053. On the high unemployment in Azerbaijan, see also Ebling report, August 1, 1945, USNA 891.00/8-145, p. 2. 92. Ebling, June 1, 1945, USNA 891.00/6-145; 891.00/1 2745 OS 3. 93. Cited in Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 110. 94. Kambaksh, Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 1, p. 186. 95. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 397; Torch for the Future, p. 245; also interviews with Azerbaijanis who lived in Tabriz during this period.

258

IRAN IN T H E T W E N T I E T H CENTURY

96. Pesyan, Death and Retreat, p. 19. 97. Sadr, cited in Rahbar 630, August 13, 1945. 98. Abrahamian, "Communism and Communalism," p. 308; and the Azeri article, "Hagigi Siyasi Ishcheler Tarbiyat i Melli" [We Must Train Dedicated Political Cadres], in Azerbaijan 37, (October 23, 1945). Also see Torch for the Future, p. 274. 99. Abrahamian, "Communism and Communalism," p. 308; and USNA 8 9 1 . 0 0 - 5 - 1 645, p. 2. 100. On Biriya, see USNA 891.00/7-2645. Information on the Tudch CC resolution and the Soviet reaction is from the Society of Iranian Socialists, "Text of Khalil Maleki's Defense and Trial," Sosiyalism 2 (October 1966):45-46; and Maleki, Political Memories. 101. Torch for the Future, p. 247 fn. 1; and Maleki, Political Memories. 102. As cited in Homayounpour, Azerbaïdjan, p. 71. 103. A b r a h a m i a n , " C o m m u n i s m and C o m m u n a l i s m , " p. 308; Zabih, Communist Movement, p. 100; and Gizil Sahife Ler [Golden Pages] (Tabriz: Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, 1945), pp. 1-10. 104. As cited in Abrahamian, Iran, p. 398. 105. On liberal apprehension about Soviet withdrawal, see Ebling reports, USNA 891.00/8-145, p. 2, and 891.00/7-2645, p. 5. For views on national revolution, see Shahrivanin Oon Ikesi [The Third of September (1945—the day the ADP was officially formed)] (Tabriz: Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, 1946), pp. 1-3; Torch for the Future, p. 247; also March 31, 1987, interview with Colonel Sarab (pseud.). On proceedings of First Party Congress, sec Azerbaijan 1, ser. 2 (October 2, 1945):2; and Azerbaijan 1, ser. 2 (October 3, 1946):21. 106. Letter to author, received September 29, 1987. 107. Ja'far Pishevari, 21 Azar: Notgler va Magaleh Ler [11th December: Collection of Speeches and Articles] (Tabriz: Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, n.d. [1946?]); Torch for the Future, pp. 4 2 7 ^ 2 8 ; and December 8, 1988, interview with Bozorg Alavi. 108. Zabih, Communist Movement, p. 100. 109. Lenczowski, Russia and the West, p. 288; Torch for the Future, pp. 30, 247, 280. 110. USNA 891.00/11-1645; includes a Farsi version. 111. I b i d . 112. "Declaration of National Autonomy," Azerbaijan, November 26, 1945; and Pesyan, Death and Retreat, pp. 61-64. 113. See n. 112 above. 114. Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, p. 39; and summer 1986 interview with Qazi's relative Mahabadi (pseud.) in Washington, DC. 115. Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, p. 41. On the Komoleh in this period, see also USNA 891.00/8-2445, pp. 2, 24, August 1945. 116. Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, p. 42. 117. Kutschra, Mahabad Republic, pp. 11-13, 42; USNA RG 226 OSS 87845 on search for U.S. support; July 6, 1986, interview with Mahabadi (pseud.) in Washington, DC. 118. Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, pp. 4 3 - 4 5 . 119. On the party platform, see Mardom 1, no. 45 (January 1, 1945). 120. On the KDP's early insistence on the separation of the two provinces from each other, see USNA 891.00/11-745, p. 1; also Qazi, as cited in Torch for the Future, p. 315. 121. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 221; Kiostovan, Negative Equilibrium, vol. 2, pp.

NOTES

259

208-211; Bijan Jazani, Tarikh-i Si Saleye Iran [Thirty Years' History of Iran] (Tehran: Maziyar, 1978). Jazani describes the Jangal Party as a combination of "reactionary big landlords and reactionary military officers"; see p. 46, fn. 22. April 30, 1987, interview with A. Gilan (pseud.), a member of the Jangal Party, who told me that the party did not have a good relationship with the Tudeh because of the latter's class orientation; and March 31, 1987, interview with Colonel Sarab (pseud.). 122. See Mossadegh's speeches in the Fourteenth Majlis, in Kiostovan, Negative Equilibrium; Kasravi, in Abrahamian, Iran, p. 218; Anonymous, ed., Notghayi Dr. Mossadegh dar Bowreyeh Shanzdahom-i Majlisi Shourayi Melli [Dr. Mossadegh's Speeches in the Sixteenth Parliament] (Tehran: Mossadegh, 1969), pp. 30-31; Seyyed Hussein Fatemi, Majmoyihi Magalat [Collection of Articles] (n.p: Mudarres, 1978), pp. 3 0 - 3 4 . A letter from a leading Marxist theoretician who belonged to the National Front, Hassan Irani (pseud.), to the author, received August 28, 1986, discusses the National Front's very vague acceptance of provincial councils after the Islamic Revolution. See Ali Reza Nabdel, Azerbaijan va Masaeleh i Melli [Azerbaijan: The National Question] (USA: 19 Bahman, 1977), p. 4. Also see Anonymous, "Bohrani Kononi va Domamayan [On the Contemporary Crisis and Its Background]," Rah-i Fedayiee 18 (June 1981):41. 123. Homayounpour, Azerbaïdjan, pp. 68-72; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 221. 124. Kiostovan, Negative Equilibrium, vol. 2, p. 214. 125. Kuniholme, Cold War, pp. 215, 272-273. 126. Ambassador Murray to Secretary of State, January 10, 1946, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, p. 300. 127. May 11, 1946, telegram: USNA 8 9 1 . 0 1 / 5 - 1 1 4 6 , p. 1; Kiostovan, Negative Equilibrium, vol. 2. pp. 217-240, passim: Pahlavi, Answer, pp. 74-75; quotation from Mossadegh as cited in Ghods, "Revolutionary Movements," p. 493. 128. Andrei Vyshinsky to the president of the Security Council, January 24, 1946, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, p. 311. 129. "Russian and American Advisors in Persia (Iran)," intelligence report, December 21, 1943, USNA RG 226 OSS 53826; see also Yuri V. Gankovsky, ed., A History of Afghanistan. Trans. Vitaly Baskakov (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982), p. 234. 130. See Jahanshahlou-Afshar, We and the Foreigners, pp. 235-239, on the differences between Molotov and Baghirov; also Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, p. 59; Najafgoli Pesyan, Az Mahabadi Kunin ta Karanehayi Aras [From Bloodstained Mahabad to the Shores of Aras] (Tehran: Chap, 1949) p. 174. 131. As cited in Abrahamian, Iran, p. 222; Davoudi, Qavam, pp. 49-50; see also Kiostovan, Negative Equilibrium, vol. 2, pp. 223-232. 132. K i o s t o v a n , Negative Equilibrium, vol. 2, pp. 2 2 6 - 2 2 7 ; Davoudi, Qavam, p. 50. 133. See the eyewitness account by Qassem Masoudi, Jariyan-i Mossaferat-i Missiyon-i Azamiy-i Iran be Mosko [Account of the Iranian Mission to Moscow] (Tehran: Etella'at Newspaper, 1947), p. 157. 134. Kuniholme, Cold War, pp. 313-314; U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, p. 311; James Francis Byrnes, All in One Lifetime (New York: Harper, 1952), pp. 333-334; James Francis Byrnes, Speaking Frankly (New York: Harper, 1947), pp. 118- 120; Walter Bedell Smith, My Three Years in Moscow (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1950), p. 15. 135. Quoted in Rambout, Kurds and the Law, p. 89. 136. Murray to secretary of state, March 22, 1946, in U.S. Department of

260

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

State, Foreign Relations 1946, vo!. 7, p. 311. On Maximov's hard line toward the Iranian government, see Murray to secretary of state, numbers 773 and 777, both dated September 27, 1945, U S N A 891.00/9-2745. 137. See Kiostovan, Negative Equilibrium, vol. 2, pp. 246-250, on Qavam's s p e e c h j u s t b e f o r e his d e p a r t u r e f o r M o s c o w , e m p h a s i z i n g his desire for equilibrium, and on the terms of the agreement; see also Lenczowski, Russia and the West, p. 300. 138. Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 60; Davoudi, Qavam, p. 118; and October 6, 1986, interview with Ali Amini. 139. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 230; Pesyan, Death and Retreat, pp. 2 0 3 - 2 2 2 ; Torch for the Future, pp. 3 5 9 - 3 7 3 ; September 10, 1986, letter from o f f i c e of S h a h p u r Bakhtiar; on Q a v a m ' s negotiations with Pishevari, see also U S N A 891.00/5-446. 140. Pesyan, From Blood-Stained Mahabad, p. 174; Rambout, Kurds and the Law, p. 107; Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, p. 94; also July 6, 1986, interview with Mahabadi (pseud.), a relative of Qazi Mohammad, and Octobcr 6, 1986, interview with Amini. 141. U S N A 8 9 1 . 0 0 / 5 - 8 4 8 , esp. p p . 2 - 3 ; 8 9 1 . 0 0 / 5 - 1 5 4 6 , p. 1; P e s y a n , From Blood-Stained Mahabad, p. 174; Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, pp. 9 3 - 9 4 , 106; Pahlavi, Answer, p. 75; Kutschra, Mahabad Republic, pp. 27, 31. 142. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 233; Kayhan 993 (June 30, 1946); Octobcr 6, 1986, interview with Ali Amini. 143. Edwards, "Persia Revisited," p. 59. 144. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 233. 145. L a d j e v a r d i , Labor Unions, pp. 133-136; Khamei, Lost Opportunity, pp. 3 1 4 - 3 1 8 ; Fateh, Oil, pp. 4 3 9 - 4 4 2 . 146. Fatemi, USSR in Iran, p. 140; Ja'far Mehdiniya, Zendegiye Siyasiye Qavam al-Saltaneh [The Political Life of Qavam al-Saltaneh] (Tehran: Pasargard, 1986), p. 249; also a letter received from Chosroe Chaqueri on May 17, 1987, and telephone conversation with Ervand Abrahamian. See Abulfazl Lcsani, "Hez.be Sosialist C h e Miguyad? [What does the Socialist Party Say?]" Rahbar special edition 829 (1946): also cited in Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 3, pp. 5 8 - 6 1 . Also, interview with member of Jangal party. 147. October 6, 1986, interview with Amini. 148. Ibid; and several interviews with (then) junior Tudeh members. 149. Rahbar (August 3, 1946). 150. T e y m o u r B a k h t i a r , Seyr-i Kommonism dar Iran [Evolution of C o m m u n i s m in Iran] (Tehran: Kayhan, 1956), p. 26; Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 3 0 0 301, 4 0 9 - 4 9 0 . 151. Cited in September 10, 1986, letter from Shahpour Bakhtiar's office; Hedayat, Memories, p. 454; Torch for the Future, p. 388. 152. U S N A 790F.91/8.2746; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 304; Torch for the Future, pp. 375, 3 8 4 - 3 9 7 ; Bakhtiar, Evolution of Communism, p. 26. 153. October 6, 1986, interview with Ali Amini; Torch for the Future, pp. 3 8 4 - 3 9 1 ; September 10, 1986, letter from Shahpour Bakhtiar's o f f i c e supports this point. 154. Allen to secretary of state, September 30, 1946, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, pp. 5 1 8 - 5 1 9 . 155. Joint Chiefs m e m o r a n d u m , October 12, 1946, in U.S. D e p a r t m e n t of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, p. 530. 156. Ibid. 157. Ibid., vol. 7, p. 531.

NOTES

261

158. As cited in Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 75; see Kennan to secretary of state, October 1, 1945, in U S N A 8 9 1 . 0 0 - 1 4 5 . 159. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, p. 532. 160. See the terms of the proposed Treaty of Friendship, C o m m e r c e , and Navigation, U S N A FW 7 1 1 . 9 1 2 / 4 - 1 0 4 5 . 161. Byrnes to Murray, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, p. 378. On Q a v a m ' s continuing hostility to the British and attempts to bring the United States into Iran's political affairs, see Mehdiniya, Political Life of Qavam. 162. U.S. D e p a r t m e n t of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 2, pp. 5 3 5 536. 163. K u n i h o l m e , Cold War, p. 438. 164. Edwards, "Persia Revisited," p. 57. 165. U S N A RG 84, September 15, 1944. 166. Acheson, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, pp. 5 2 2 - 5 2 9 . 167. Ibid., vol. 7, pp. 5 3 7 - 5 3 8 ; and Kuniholme, Cold War, pp. 348, 390. 168. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, p. 556; on increasing U.S. assurances of military materiel for internal security, see also A c h e s o n to U.S. ambassador, N o v e m b e r 22, 1946, in U S N A 7 1 1 . 9 1 / 1 1 - 2 2 4 6 , esp. p. 2. 169. On R a z m a r a ' s c o n n e c t i o n s to the T u d e h m i l i t a r y n e t w o r k , see M e h d i n i y a , Razmara, pp. 193-209, 2 5 5 - 2 5 9 ; March 30, 1986, interview with Colonel Sarab (pseud.). 170. Pesyan, Death and Retreat, pp. 2 2 3 - 2 6 7 ; Pesyan, From Blood-Stained Mahabad. This valuable information was provided to the author in interviews with officers who participated in this campaign. 171. Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 174. 172. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 2 4 3 - 2 4 4 ; Mehdiniya, Political Life of Qavam, p. 206. In his October 6, 1986, interview, Amini told the author that Q a v a m directed the rejection of the oil proposals by telling prominent deputies to vote against it. 173. See Mehdiniya, Political Life of Qavam, for a fascinating account of Q a v a m ' s rise and fall: see pp. 3 4 1 - 3 4 2 on Razmara's relations with Q a v a m ; on Razmara's tactical alliance with the shah against Qavam, see Mehdiniya, Razmara, p p . 43, 5 8 - 5 9 , 138, 202, 6 7 5 - 6 8 0 . On the court's role in Q a v a m ' s fall, see Ashraf Pahlavi, Faces in a Mirror: Memoirs from Exile (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1980), p. 90. 174. See Mehdiniya, Razmara. Also see "An Appraisal of General Razmara, Iranian Chief of Staff," OIR report no. 4801, June 8, 1950, esp. p. 11; and Abbas Gharahbagi (the last Joint Chief of Staff of the Iranian Imperial Army), Hagayeg Darbariyeh Bohran-i Iran [Truths About the Iranian Crisis] (Paris: Soleil, n.d.), p. 166. 175. See Torch for the Future, p. 572; Katouzian's introduction in Maleki, Political Memories, pp. 8 6 - 8 7 . In the author's interviews with Colonel Sarab (pseud.), h e asserted that Razmara definitely had connections with the Tudeh. In a May 3, 1987, letter to the author, Fereydoun Keshavarz admits it is possible that K h i a n o u r i and K a m b a k s h (head of the T u d e h military n e t w o r k ) had ties to Razmara. 176. Maleki, Political Memories, pp. 3 6 7 - 3 7 7 . 177. Churchill, in the New York Times, March 5 and 6, 1946. 178. Stalin, in LaFeber, Origins of the Cold War, pp. 1 3 9 - 1 4 3 ; see also

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IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Vyshinski, "A Soviet Critique of the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan" (September 18, 1947), in the same source, pp. 160-161; and Valentin Berezhkov, History in the Making: Memories of World War II Diplomacy. Trans. Dudley Hägen and Barry Jones (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982). 179. As cited in Adam Ulam, Expansion and Coexistence (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1974), p. 449. On Soviet perceptions of increasing tension in Iran and the northern tier, see also "Maneuvres of the Iranian Reactionaries," New Times 2 (January 9, 1947):20; and "American Foreign Policy," New Times 12 (March 21, 1947): 1-3.

Ch. 8 Notes 1. As cited in Homayounpour, Azerbaïdjan, p. 66. 2. On the elections, see Torch for the Future, p. 255; on the ministers, sec pp. 286-287. 3. Fatemi, USSR in Iran, p. 90. 4. Pishevari, 11th December. 5. Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 113. 78 (December 12, 1945); 102 (January 6, 1946); also cited 6. Azerbaijan in Torch for the Future, pp. 287, 321. Also see "Bayaniyeh Heyateh Melliyeh Azerbaijan" [The Declaration of the National Commission of Azerbaijan], in Azerbaijan (n.d.) for a very similar program. 7. Azeri article, "Firqeh Mabzin Tarikhi Ishi [The Historical Action of Our Party]," in Azerbaijan 6 (September 17, 1945). 8. Pishevari, 11th December, p. 56. 9. Ibid., pp. 13-14. 10. Quoted in Abrahamian, Iran, p. 409. 11. Ivanov, History, pp. 111-112; William O. Douglas, Strange Lands and Friendly People (New York: Harper Brothers, 1951); Pishevari, 11th December, passim; H o m a y o u n p o u r , Azerbaïdjan, p. 13. The author's interviews with Azerbaijanis all confirmed these reforms and their popularity. 12. Mirzeh Ibrahimoff, Dar Bareyeh Jonbeshe Demokratik Melli dar Azerbaijan [Concerning the National Democratic Movement of Azerbaijan] (Soviet Azerbaijan: Association of Writers of the Azerbaijan Soviet Republic, 1947), p. 49; Jazani, Thirty Years' History, p. 26; and numerous interviews with residents of Azerbaijan. 13. Ladjevardi, Labor Unions, p. 113. 14. Torch for the Future, pp. 324-333. 15. Douglas, Strange Lands and Friendly People, p. 44; Ibrahimoff, National Democratic Movement of Azerbaijan, p. 48; Iraj Akgar, Marg Hast Bazgasht Nist [There is Death but No Retreat] (Iran: Chehr, 1949[?]); and interviews with residents of Tabriz, Rezaieh, and Mianeh. 16. Rossow, January 7, 1946, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, p. 298. 17. Homayounpour, Azerbaïdjan, p. 134. 18. Quoted in Abrahamian, Iran, p. 400; Pesyan, Death and Retreat, p. 116; Nabard [Battle] 125 (December 20, 1945); also cited in Torch for the Future, p. 308. 19. Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, p. 60; Torch for the Future, p. 283. 20. Ivanov, History, p. 113; Homayounpour, Azerbaïdjan, p. 141; Pesyan,

NOTES

263

From Blood-Stained Mahabad, p. 156. A May 4, 1987, letter to the author from Seyyed M o h a m m a d Samadi, a Kurdish historian, emphasized the patrimonial nature of Kurdish society. 21. Homayounpour, Azerbaïdjan, p. 141. 22. Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, pp. 68-69. 23. H o m a y o u n p o u r , Azerbaïdjan, p. 141. On Mulla Mustafa and his activities in Iraq, see Ismail Ardalan, Asrari Barzan [The Secrets of Barzan] (Tehran: Kuhistan, 1946). 24. Jazani, Thirty Years' History, p. 29. Also 1976-1977 discussions with people who resided in the Mahabad area during the time of the republic, and interview with Mahabad (pseud.). 25. Ghassemlou, "Kurdistan in Iran," in Chaliand, People Without a Country, p. 119; also see Ivanov, History, pp. 113-114, citing the KDP program. 26. Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, p. 102; Pesyan, From Blood-Stained Mahabad, pp. 169-170; Ghassemlou, "Kurdistan in Iran," p. 119; Kurdistan (February-June 1946). 27. January 1987 discussion with Amin (pseud.), a member of the Kurdish Youth League during the 1945-1946 revolution in Kurdistan; and Kurdistan (May 8, 1946): 1, 4. 28. Mahabad (pseud.), a relative of Qazi, emphasized the Kurds' economic grievances in a summer 1986 interview. 29. Dooher to secretary of state, May 6, 1946, in USNA 891.00/5-746; also Acheson to Dooher, May 29, 1946, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, pp. 442-443. 30. Letter from Jahanshahlou to the author, received June 19, 1987. 31. Pishevari, 11th December, pp. 18-19. 32. March 30, 1987, interview with Colonel Sarab (pseud.). All Azerbaijanis the author interviewed supported this statement. Moghaddam quoted the mohajer's slogan in a May 29, 1987, letter to the author. See also Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 3, p. 211; Torch for the Future, p. 420. 33. Hoover Institute archives CSUZ50001-A, special edition of Azerbaijan, December 21, 1945, on the revolutionary tribunals. Also cited in Torch for the Future-, and Pishevari, 11th December, p. 7. 34. Rossow to Secretary of State, February 11, 1946, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, p. 333. 35. Pesyan, Death and Retreat, p. 138; interviews with Colonel Sarab (pseud.) and other Azerbaijanis. 36. T a f r e s h i y a n , Khorasan Division, pp. 6 8 - 7 5 ; the interview with Colonel Sarab (pseud.) confirms this. On the army organization in Azerbaijan, see Pesyan, Death and Retreat, pp. 128-148. 37. Pesyan, Death and Retreat, p. 127; and interview with Colonel Sarab. 38. April 5, 1946, in U.S. Department of States, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, p. 405. 39. Akgar, Death but No Retreat, esp. pp. 20-59; Pesyan, Death and Retreat-, Torch for the Future, p. 319; May 29, 1987, letter from Moghaddam; and interviews with residents of Maragheh, Tabriz, and Mianeh. 40. On Zanjan as a trouble spot, see U S N A 891.00/1-2746. On border incidents see Abrahamian, Iran, p. 236. See also Torch for the Future, pp. 357, 428; and Akgar, Death but No Retreat, p. 37. 41. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 412. Information regarding the urban versus rural tension was obtained through extensive interviews with former members of the Tudeh party as well as local bazaaris.

264

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

42. Ibrahimoff, National Democratic Movement of Azerbaijan, pp. 49, 55; Jazani, Thrity Years' History, p. 26; Jahanshahlou-Afshar, We and the Foreigners, pp. 198-210; Zabih, Communist Movement, p. 121; Maleki, Political Memories, pp. 376-377; Torch for the Future, p. 369. 43. Zabih, Communist Movement, pp. 121-122; and interviews with various residents of Azerbaijan. 44. Interviews with Azerbaijanis; see also Homayounpour, Azerbaïdjan, p. 130, where he cites reports of Daneshyan and Kabiri advocating this fusion. On the ADP's ambivalence toward Iran's national bourgeoisie, see Kiostovan, Negative Equilibrium, vol. 1, pp. 242-245. 45. Cottam, Nationalism, p. 101; Jazani, Thirty Years' History, p. 26; Tafreshiyan, Khorasan Division, p. 76. 46. Pishevari, 11th December, pp. 12-13; also see Jazani, Thirty Years' History, p. 26. Extensive interviews with Azerbaijanis confirm this. 47. Pesyan, From Blood-Stained Mahabad, pp. 158-159, 174; Kutschra, Mahabad Republic, pp. 24-25; Jahanshahlou-Afshar, We and the Foreigners, pp. 290-293; Kurdistan 72, as cited in Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 13, pp. 197-201, esp. p. 201. Also discussions with residents of Mahabad, and interview with Mahabad. 48. September 30, 1946; cited by Abrahamian, Iran, p. 412. 49. For the Mahabad Republic's "army" see the Hoover Institute, "Parabel Project," CSUZ49007-A 1949-50, 4 MS boxes: box 1, 8.33. Also Pesyan, From Blood-Stained Mahabad, pp. 120-142, 149; Jazani, Thirty Years' History, p. 31; Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, pp. 91-92; Momeni, Struggle in Kurdistan, pp. 40, 79. Also Torch for the Future, pp. 444-445. 50. Nushad, "Agar Man Pishevari Budam [If I Were Pishevari]," Kayhan 943 (May 1, 1946). 51. Mohammad Tagi Bahar, "Firqehe Dimukrat i Azerbaijan [The Democratic Party of Azerbaijan]," Yagma 25 (1945); also cited in Ibrahimoff, National Democratic Movement of Azerbaijan, pp. 29-30. 52. Parcham [Flag], October 1945. See also Yahya Zaka, ed., Maghalat-i Kasravi [Kasravi's Articles] (New Beach, CA: Gutenberg Publications, n.d.), p. 2. Kasravi's book, from which the quotations are taken, is Sarnavisht-i Iran Cheh Khahad Bud? [What Will Be the Fate of Iran?]; see pp. 51, 62; see also p. 49. 53. Nushad, "In Bachehara Ki Bozorg Mikonad? [Who is Bringing Up These Children?]," Kayhan 984 (June 18, 1946). 54. Cited in Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 218-219; Bahar articles in Nabard 124, 125; Ahmad Kasravi, Zaban-i Pak [Pure Language] (Tehran: Payam Press, 1946); and Zaka, [Kasravi's Articles], p. 2 and passim. 55. The citations are from three articles by "Ismail" [pseud., no surname given]: "Zabani Melliye Hammihani Azarbaijan ma zabani Farsi Ast [The National Language of our Fellow Countrymen in our Azerbaijan is Persian]," Iran-i Ma 3, no. 460 (December 10, 1945): 1-2; "Zabani Parsi Bozorgtarin Neshaneyeh Melliyat va Tamadon i Aran Ast [The Persian Language is the Most Valuable Symbol of our Nation and its Civilization]," Iran-i Ma 3, no. 461(December 11, 1945): 1-2; and "Tehran Mitavanad va Bayad Azerbaijan ra Negahdarad [Tehran Can and Must Hold Azerbaijan]," Iran-i Ma 3, no. 492(March 20, 1946): 1, 4. See also Shahbaz 11 (January 1, 1946). 56. June 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 57. "Payahaye Haghighiye Federasion [True Foundation of Federation]," Nejate Iran (n.d.). This newspaper remained sympathetic to the Azerbaijan

NOTES

265

revolution; see, e.g., no. 538 (1945). As cited in Ibrahimoff, National Democratic Movement of Azerbaijan, pp. 36-39. 58. As cited in Abrahamian, "Communism and Communalism," p. 312. 59. Ardeshir Ovanessian, "Nehzati Demokrasiyi Azerbaijan va Halli Mosalimatamizi'an [The Democratic Movement of Azerbaijan and its Peaceful Settlement]," Rahbar 719 (May 15, 1946):1, 6. 60. As cited in Abrahamian, ¡ran, p. 405; also Keshavarz's letter to the author, dated May 29, 1987. 61. Cited in Abrahamian, Iran, p. 404. 62. Pishevari, 11th December, p. 56. 63. As cited in Abrahamian, "Communism and Communalism," p. 314. 64. Ibid. 65. Cited in Torch for the Future, p. 247. 6 6 . Azerbaijan 185 (May 4, 1946); on Daneshyan's support, see Mehdiniya, Political Life of Qavam, p. 351; also Jahanshahlou's letter to the author, received June 19, 1987. 67. Aras 9 (January 1947). 68. Abrahamian, "Communism and Communalism," p. 314. 69. May 3, 1987, letter of Keshavarz to the author, though Keshavarz does pay tribute to Pishevari; and March 30, 1987, interview with Colonel Sarab. 70. Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 233-234; Mehdiniya, Political Life of Qavam, pp. 359-363, passim; Mehdiniya, Razmara, p. 596. 71. [One More Year since Imam Ali's Martyrdom], Yazd Rahbar 1, no. 2 (August 22, 1944); also see [Our Opinion About Islam], Rahbar 257 (May 11, 1943). For a post-Azerbaijan statement on religion, see Nameh-i Mardom 1, no. 5 (January 6, 1947). On the shah's participation in the funeral, see Hedayat, Memories, pp. 454-455. 72. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 374. For the religious authorities' role, see Akgar, Death but No Retreat, p. 169; and Pesyan, Death and Retreat, p. 80. Interviews with Azerbaijan residents and former Tudeh members with connections to the ADP also confirmed this information. 73. Pesyan, Death and Retreat, pp. 82-90. 74. Sutton, Tabriz consul, to secretary of state, December 12, 1946, in U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, p. 561. 75. Ramazani, "The Republic of Azerbaijan and the Kurdish People's Republic," in Hammond and Farrel, Communist Takeover, p. 474. 76. A summary of these views is in Zabih, Communist Movement, pp. 118-119; also see Torch for the Future, p. 431. 77. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations 1946, vol. 7, pp. 5 6 0 562. 78. For further details see Eagleton, Kurdish Republic, p. 119-129. 79. Douglas, Strange Lands and Friendly People, p. 50; Akgar, Death but No Retreat, p. 164; USNA 891.00/8-549, passim; 891.00/7-1549, p. 2; and 891.00/7-949, passim. On the massacres, see Torch for the Future, pp. 419^122. 80. Khalil Maleki, Do Ravesh Baraye Yek Hadaf [Two Approaches to the Same Goal] (Tehran: Jamiyate Sosialiste Tudeheye Iran, 1946), p. 25. 81. [The Declaration of the Socialist Group of the Tudeh], passim. 82. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 312. 83. Ibid., pp. 3 1 0 - 3 1 1 . 84. For biographical details, see Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 296-297, 3 1 3 -

314.

85. Zabih, Communist

Movement,

p. 146; Abrahamian, Iran,

pp. 3 1 0 -

266

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

311; Nameh-i Mardom 5, no. 1 (January 5, 1947). 86. A h m a d Ghassemi, Ghanon Chist? Va Che Goneh Bevojod Amad? [What is Law? And How Was It Created?] (Tehran: Tudeh, 1947), passim. 8 7 . Torch for the Future, pp. 171, 205; Akhbare Iran [Iran's News] 14 (January 1, 1947). For m o r e detail on the Tudeh in this period, see G h o d s , "Revolutionary Movements," pp. 6 2 7 - 6 3 5 . 88. M e h d i n i y a , Razmara, pp. 2 3 9 - 3 2 1 ; also see Ali Akbar Mohtadi and Nozar Razmara, "Zendigiye Sepahbad Razmara [General Razmara's Life]," Elm va Jamieh [Science and Society], 8, no. 52 ( M a y - J u n e 1987):52-58, esp. pp. 5 4 55; Az Enshe'ab ta Kudeta [From Split to Coup d'Etat] (Tehran: Diba, 1984), pp. 1 2 8 - 1 2 9 ; Maine Elamiyeh Dowlhat rajehe Soegasd be Shahanshah [Text of the G o v e r n m e n t Declaration on the Attempt on the Shah's Life] (Tehran: Salnamehe Donya, March 1949), p. 39.

Ch. 9 Notes 1. Cited in Khamei, From Split to Coup d'Etat, pp. 156-157; Torch for the Future, p. 487; Ettela'at 6927 (May 8, 1949). 2. Fatemi, Articles, p. 119. 3. S e e U S N A 8 9 1 . 0 0 / 9 - 5 4 9 ; Azari, Revolt of Pesyan, pp. 4 9 3 - 4 9 6 ; Hussein Makki, Ketabe Siyah [The Black Book] (Tehran: Majlise Shouraye Melli [Iranian Parliament], 1950), pp. 5 8 0 - 5 8 1 and passim; Mossadegh's Speeches in Sixteenth Majlis, vol. 1, pp. 6 5 - 6 6 ; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 252; Jazani, Thirty Years' History, p. 59. 4. M e h d i n i y a , Razmara, pp. 60, 81; U S N A 8 9 1 . 0 0 / 7 - 1 1 4 9 ; 8 9 1 . 0 0 / 8 2249; 8 9 1 . 0 0 / 8 - 8 4 9 ; and 7 1 1 . 9 1 / 7 - 1 4 8 . 5. October 6, 1986, telephone interview with Ali Amini, for the first view; for the second, see Wiley to secretary of state, July 1949, in U S N A 8 9 1 . 0 0 / 7 - 1 1 4 9 , p. 2; for the final view, I am indebted to my interviews with General Varahram and Ali Akbar Mohtadi. See also Mehdiniya, Razmara-, Nozar R a z m a r a and Ali A k b a r M o h t a d i , " Z e n d e g i y e Sepahbod R a z m a r a [General Razmara's Life]," Elm va Jamaeh 8, no. 52 (Spring 1987):52-58, and passim. 6. Paraphrasing the State Department report on Razmara, J u n e 8, 1950, OIR report no. 4 8 0 1 . 1 , "An Appraisal of General Razmara, Iranian Chief of Staff"; Khamei, From Split to C o u p d'Etat, pp. 2 5 0 - 2 5 1 . 7. OIR report no. 4801.1, p. 11; Allen report, March 22, 1948, in U S N A 711.91/3-1648; and interview with Ali Akbar Mohtadi, Razmara's deputy premier, December 28, 1987. 8. Pahlavi, Answer, p. 82; R a z m a r a and Mohtadi, "General Razmara's Life," pp. 5 2 - 5 3 ; U S N A 7 1 1 . 9 1 / 7 - 1 4 8 . 9. M a k k i , Black Book, p. 714. 10. Ibid., p p . 5 8 0 - 5 8 1 , and passim; Mossadegh's Speeches in Sixteenth Majlis, pp. 6 5 - 6 6 . 11. R a z m a r a a n d M o h t a d i , " G e n e r a l R a z m a r a ' s L i f e , " p p . 5 7 - 5 8 ; Mehdiniya, Razmara, pp. 223, 3 6 6 - 3 6 7 ; on his close relations with the Soviets, see pp. 1 9 1 - 2 5 9 and passim, esp. pp. 209, 255, 259; U S N A 7 9 0 6 . 9 1 / 7 - 9 4 9 and 7906.91/6-2849. 12. For this rumor, see OIR Report no. 4801.1. 13. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 265; Razmara and Mohtadi, "General Razmara's Life," p. 58; for purge victims, see Mehdiniya, Razmara, pp. 129-139. Also see

NOTES

267

Mossadegh's Speeches in Sixteenth Majlis; June 28, 1987, interview with Sanjabi; and a November 23, 1988, letter from Jahan (pseud.), a political associate of Mossadegh. 14. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 266; Sepehr Zabih, The Mossadegh Era: Roots of the Iranian Revolution (Chicago: Lakeview Press, 1982) p. 25; Cottam, Nationalism, p. 268; Mehdiniya, Razmara, pp. 350-361, 369-376. 15. Mehdiniya, Razmara, pp. 391-392. 16. For the bylaws of the National Front, see Bakhtar Emruz [Today's West] 273 (July 7, 1950); also author's June 27, 1987, personal interview with Sanjabi. 17. See OIR Reports nos. 097.37-1092, 5272 (June 9, 1950), "Mossadegh as a Potential Popular Leader of Iran," esp. p. 5; and June 26, 1987, personal interview with Sanjabi. 18. Zabih, Communist Movement, pp. 169-170. 19. Jazani, Thirty Years' History, p. 63; and June 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 20. June 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi; Jazani, Thirty Years' History, pp. 63-64; Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 258-259. 21. Jazani, Thirty Years' History, pp. 62-63; Abrahamian, ¡ran, p. 259. 22. Cottam, Nationalism, p. 266; Zabih, Communist Movement, p. 187; Jazani, Thirty Years' History, pp. 58-59; and the Briton cited in Khamei, From Split to Coup d'État, pp. 263-264. 23. On Maleki's popularity with young people, the author is indebted to personal interviews with former members of the Toilers. 24. Khalil Maleki, Niroye Muharekeye Tarikh [The Driving Force of History] (Tehran: Toilers Party of Iran, 1951); and anonymous pamphlet [presumably by Maleki], Niruy-i Sevvom Piruz Mishavad [The Third Force Will Be Victorious] (Tehran: Publication Commission of Toilers' Party of Iran, December 4, 1951), p. 21. 25. Jazani, Thirty Years' History, pp. 32, 41, 55, 58, 62; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 256. 26. Zabih, Communist Movement, pp. 188-192. 27. Quote from ibid., p. 187; see also pp. 161-173 and passim; Jazani, Thirty Years' History, p. 34. 28. Khamei, From Split to Coup d'État, p. 256; Jazani, Thirty Years' History, pp. 34-35; Kambaksh, Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 2, esp. pp. 5 3 - 5 4 . 29. Cottam, Nationalism, p. 270. 30. Zabih, Mossadegh Era, p. 26. 31. June 26, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 32. C o t t a m , Nationalism, p. 274; on the AIOC, see Fatemi, Oil Diplomacy, Fateh, Oil, esp. p. 85; and Anthony Sampson, The Seven Sisters:The Great Oil Companies and the World They Make (New York: Viking Press, 1975), pp. 135-166; Zabih, Mossadegh Era, p. 30. Pahlavi, Answer, p. 85, gives a rather different version of events. See also BBC video, July 28, 1986, End of an Empire: Mossadegh; Hassan Sadr, Defae Dr Mossadegh az naft dar Zendane Zerehi [Dr. Mossadegh's Defense of His Position on Oil from his Jail Cell at the Headquarters of the Second Armoured Division] (Tehran: Sahamie-Am Publishing, 1978); Dean Acheson, Present at the Creation: My Years at the State Department (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969), pp. 506-511, 600, 662, 679-685; Acheson expresses the U.S. perception of the Anglo-Iranian conflict. See also the anonymously edited Notgha va Maktobati Dr. Mossadegh [Dr. Mossadegh's

268

IRAN IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Speeches and Writings]. 2 vols. (Tehran: Mossadegh Publications, 1969), vol. 2, pt. 1, pp. 5 - 7 0 , 114-124, and passim. 33. Zabih, Mossadegh Era, pp. 9 0 - 9 1 ; Mohammed Mossadegh, Khaterat va Ta'alomat-i Mossadegh [Memories and Sorrows], Ed. Hossein Afshar. (Tehran: National Front, 1986), p. 184; June 26, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 34. J u n e 26, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 35. Kianouri, Tudeh and Mossadegh, p. 6 and passim. 36. Quoted by Cottam, Nationalism, p. 153; also USNA 097.3 21092, no. 5 9 1 5 , "Iran: B a s i c A t t i t u d e s of the N a t i o n a l F r o n t C o n c e r n i n g F o r e i g n Relations," p. 16. 37. J u n e 26, 1987, interview with Sanjabi; Zabih, Mossadegh Era, p. 34. 38. Z a b i h , Mossadegh Era, p. 44; OIR Report, 097.3 Z1092, N o v e m b e r 23, 1951, "Increasing Communist Threat in Iran," p. 6. 3 9 . Shahed [Witness (the organ of the Third Force)], July 19, 1952; M e h d i n i y a , Political Life of Qavam, pp. 5 7 1 - 6 5 5 , esp. 653; June 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi; and Fateh, Oil, p. 491. 40. Z a b i h , Mossadegh Era, p. 83; Sadr, Mossadegh's Position on Oil, p. 57; J u n e 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 4 1 . M e h d i n i y a , Political Life of Qavam, pp. 5 6 1 - 5 7 1 . 4 2 . Z a b i h , Mossadegh Era, p. 83; and Patrick C l a w s o n and C y r u s S a s s a n p o u r , " A d j u s t m e n t to a F o r e i g n E x c h a n g e S h o c k : I r a n 195153," International Journal of Middle East Studies 19 (1987): 1 - 2 2 , esp. pp. 2 1 - 2 2 ; M o s s a d e g h , Memories, p. 279; and June 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 43. As cited in Abrahamian, Iran, p. 276; Jazani, Thirty Years' History, p. 47; and July 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 44. Sadr, Mossadegh's Position on Oil, pp. 7 1 - 7 2 ; Ahmad Irani and Hamid Irani, eds., Mobarizati Dr. Mossadegh [Dr. Mossadegh's Struggles] (Los Angeles: Ketab, 1986), pp. 7 0 - 7 1 . 4 5 . J u n e 28, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 46. June 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 276. 47. See Tudeh, Bazi Maghalate Mardom [Some Articles of M a r d o m ] (Tehran: Tudeh, n.d.); Tudeh, Golchini az Matbuat [Collected Articles from the Press] (Tehran: Tudeh, March 5, 1953), pp. 1 - 1 0 ; also Jazani, Thirty Years' History, pp. 4 8 - 4 9 . 48. J u n e 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 4 9 . Fateh, Oil, pp. 5 7 9 - 5 8 0 ; Mossadegh's Speeches in Sixteenth Majlis, pp. 1 1 2 - 1 1 3 . Memories, 50. J u n e 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi; Maleki, Political pp. 1 0 3 - 1 0 4 ; Kianouri, Tudeh and Mossadegh, pp. 4 3 ^ 6 . 51. J u n e 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 52. Zabih, Mossadegh Era, p. 104; and telephone interview with Richard Cottam, N o v e m b e r 29, 1987. 53. M o s s a d e g h , Memories, p. 189. 53. Kermit Roosevelt, Countercoup: The Struggle for the Control of Iran (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979); Kermit Roosevelt, "How T h e CIA brought the Shah to Power," Washington Post, May 6, 1979; on the British role, see Zabih, Mossadegh Era, p. 125. 55. A n o n y m o u s , Dar Bareyeh Bistohashte Mordad [About August 19, 1953] (Tehran: T u d e h Central Committee, January 1954) passim, esp. pp. 1 1 - 1 3 , 36, 47; Kianouri, Tudeh and Mossadegh, pp. 4 3 - 4 6 . 56. Jazani, Thirty Years' History, p. 88; A n o n y m o u s , Kiyanate Oo be

NOTES

269

Vatanash [The Shah's Betrayal of his Country] (n.p: Tudeh Publishing Center, 1960), p. 40. 57. B a k h t i a r , Evolution of Communism, pp. 4 6 7 - 5 1 0 ; Torch for the Future, passim, esp. pp. 6 3 6 - 6 4 5 ; Zabih, Communist Movement, p. 209; Jazani, Thirty Years' History, pp. 7 0 - 7 2 . For a journalistic account of the military network, see "The Anatomy of a Red Spy Ring," Life, November 21, 1955. 58. See Zabih, Communist Movement, p. 221, for the resolution of the Fourth Plenum; also included in Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 1, pp. 3 5 9 - 3 8 5 , esp. pp. 3 6 8 - 3 6 9 . 59. Zhukov, quoted in Zabih, Communist Movement, pp. 2 1 6 - 2 1 7 . 60. Kianouri, "The National Bourgeoisie, Their N a t u r e and Policy," in World Marxist Review 2, no. 8 (September 1959):61-65, esp. pp. 6 4 - 6 5 ; and Iraj Iskandari, "What Do We Mean by the National Bourgeoisie?" World Marxist Review 2, no. 8 (September 1959):72-73. 61. See K a m b a k s h , Labor and Communist Movement, vol. 2, p. 9 and passim on the national bourgeoisie. 62. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 195; and Abrahamian, Iran, p. 459; Jazani, Thirty Years' History, p. 63; Sanjabi interview, June 27, 1987. For an analysis of the Socialist Society, see Chaqueri, Documents, vol. 10. 63. March 27, 1987, telephone interview with Amini. 64. Touhidi-Baghini, "Roots," p. 239. 6 5 . Shah's Betrayal, pp. 15-16. 6 6 . Z a b i h , Communist Movement, p. 225; K a m b a k s h , "Iran at the C r o s s r o a d s , " World Marxist Review 4, no. 9 (September 1961):38—43, esp. p. 43. 67. Pahlavi, Answer, p. 146. 68. March 27, 1987, interview with Ali Amini; and A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 4 2 3 . 69. For T u d e h reaction to land reform, see K. Nouri [Kianouri], "The Agrarian Question and the National Liberation Movement," World Marxist Review 4, no. 1 (January 1961):74-76. 7 0 . D a v i d U h l m a n n , "The C o n s e q u e n c e s of P a t r i m o n i a l L e a d e r s h i p : Autocratic and Technocratic Development and the Iranian Revolution" (Term paper substituting for master's thesis, University of Akron, 1983), p. 40. 7 1 . Ibid., pp. 3 0 - 3 2 . 72. Abrahamian, Iran, p. 424. 7 3 . M a l e k i , Political Memories, pp. 153-164; Ardeshir Ovanesyan [Ovanessian], "Behind the Smokescreen of Positive Nationalism," World Marxist Review 5, no. 9 (September 1962):76-77; and June 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 7 4 . A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, pp. 4 2 5 - 4 2 6 ; Anonymous, Zendiginameh-i Imam Khomeini [The Life of Imam Khomeini] (Qum: Fayzieh Seminary, 1979). 75. For examples, see Ruhollah K. Ramazani, "Modernization and Social Research in Iran," American Behavioral Scientist 5, no. 7 (March 1962): 17-20, e s p . p. 19. 7 6 . Bill, "Foundations of P o w e r , " pp. 4 0 0 - 4 1 8 ; Gastil, "Impediments," 328. 7 7 . A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 471; Ali Shariati, Marxism and Other Western Fallacies (Berkeley: Mizan Press, 1980), p. 50. 78. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 471; Shariati, Marxism, p. 56. 79. Jalal al-Ahmad, Garbzadegi [Intoxication with the West] (Solon, OH: U n i o n of Moslem Students in the U.S. and Canada, 1979).

270

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80. Samad Behrangi, Kandokavi dar Masale Tarbiyati i Iran [Analysis of Educational Problems in Iran] (USA.: Organization of the People's Fedayin Guerrillas of Iran, n.d.). 8 1 . K h o s r o w Golesorkhi, Siyasati Honar; Siyasati Sher [The Politics of Art; the Politics of Poetry] (Encino, CA: Ketab, 1986). 82. Golesorkhi's defense in the military court, tape from Iranian Radio and Television Archives released after the Islamic Revolution.

Ch. 10 Notes 1 Robert Graham, Iran: The Illusion of Power (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978), p. 142; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 435; Halliday, Iran, pp. 75-91; and Ali M. Reza, "What Happened to Iran's Oil Revenues" (paper presented at the University of California at Berkeley, October 1979), p. 2. 2. Graham, Iran, pp. 140-142; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 436; Halliday, Iran, pp. 7 6 - 7 8 . 3. As cited in Abrahamian, Iran, p. 469. Classes, and 4. James Alban Bill, The Politics of Iran: Groups, Modernization (Columbus, OH: Charles E. Merrill, 1972), p. 174. 5. Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 434, 438. 6. Ibid., p. 437; Graham, Iran, pp. 155-163. 7. Zonis, Political Elite, pp. 83, 9 2 - 9 4 ; U h l m a n n , "Patrimonial Leadership," p. 10. 8. The dollar amounts were supplied to the author by the O f f i c e of Statistics and Auditing of International Oil Reports in the Iranian oil ministry. 9. Graham, Iran, pp. 87-88, 121; Fred Halliday, "The Iranian Revolution: Uneven Development and Religious Populism," Journal of International Affairs 36, no. 2 (Fall 1982-Winter 1983): 193. 10. Pahlavi, Answer, p. 156; Katouzian, "Oil Versus Agriculture: A Case of Dual Resource Depletion in Iran," Journal of Peasant Studies 5 (April 1978):347369; and Hamid Mohtadi, "Industrialization and Urban Inequality in LDCs: A Theoretical Analysis with Evidence from Pre-Revolutionary Iran," Journal of Developing Areas forthcoming; viewed in MS form in October 1987. 11. U h l m a n n , " P a t r i m o n i a l Leadership," p. 4 6 ; Halliday, "Iranian Revolution," p. 194. 12. Halliday, Iran, p. 116; on Kurdistan, see Ghassemlou, "Kurdistan in Iran," p. 116. 13. Halliday, Iran, pp. 113-114; Graham, Iran, pp. 117-119. 14. Graham, Iran, pp. 117-118; Halliday, Iran, pp. 113-114. 15. Uhlmann, "Patrimonial Leadership," p. 44. 16. Reza, "Iran's Oil Revenues," p. 4; Zonis, Political Elite, pp. 136-140. 17. Graham, Iran, pp. 2 7 - 2 8 , 4 9 - 5 0 , 117-122, 244; Hamid Mohtadi, "Internal Migration and Urban Inequality: An Economic Analysis of the Iranian Development Experience" (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, 1982). 18. Nixon's 1972 inaugural address, cited in James A. Jacobs, "The Nixon Doctrine" (M.S. requirement essay, University of London, 1974). 19. Ivanov, History, pp. 271-280. 20. Ibid., p. 263; Graham, ¡ran, pp. 173-175; Pahlavi, Answer, pp. 196198; and Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 435-436. 21. Ivanov, History, pp. 263-269; Graham, Iran, pp. 112-113.

NOTES

271

22. Graham, Iran, p. 115; G a n k o v s k y , Yu. V., ed. A History of Afghanistan, Translated from the Russian by Vitaly Baskakov (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982) p. 301. 2 3 . Kayhan, March 8, 1975. 24. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 443. 25. U h l m a n n , "Patrimonial Leadership," pp. 5 5 - 5 6 . 26. Ibid., p. 56. 2 7 . G r a h a m , Iran, pp. 1 9 - 2 0 , 103. T h e dollar a m o u n t s of Iran's oil r e v e n u e s w e r e , again, supplied by the Iranian oil ministry. T h e figures on inflation w e r e supplied by the E c o n o m i c Research D e p a r t m e n t of the Banke Markaziye Iran. 28. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 429; Halliday, Iran, pp. 118, 129; Graham, Iran, p. 47. 29. G r a h a m , Iran, pp. 25, 29. 30. A b r a h a m a i n , Iran, p. 432; Reza, "Iran's Oil Revenues," p. 3. 31. Z o n i s , Political Elite, pp. 42^13. 32. Ibid., pp. 136-140; Reza, "Iran's Oil Revenues," p. 4. 33. Adibi, New Middle Class, pp. 8 4 - 1 1 8 ; Touhidi-Baghini, "Roots," p. 249; A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 434. Information on class status in the military was provided to the author by several former high-ranking officers of the Iran military now residing in the United States. 34. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 444. 35. Ibid., pp. 434, 4 4 5 ; N i k k i R . Keddie, Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 241; Shajii, Representatives, pp. 195, 265. 36. G r a h a m , Iran, p. 224. Information on unemployment was provided by the Ministry of Planning and Budget, Statistical Centre of Iran, received October 1987. 37. Halliday, "Iranian Revolution," p. 194; and John Walton, Reluctant Rebels (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984), p. 206. 38. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 452. 39. Ibid., p. 453. On the KDP, see Kutschra, Mahabad Republic, pp. 4 0 45; and Jazani, Thirty Years' History, pp. 89, 171-177; and Anonymous, Asrari Faaliyathayi Zed i Irani Dar Karije az Keshvar [Secrets of Anti-Iranian Activities Abroad] (Tehran: S A V A K , n.d.). 4 0 . K u r d i s h D e m o c r a t i c Party of Iran, Barnahim va Assasnameyeh Mossavabihi Hizb [The Approved Programs and Statutes of the Party] (Paris: K D P Publishing House, December 1981). 4 1 . Jazani, Thirty Years' History, pp. 1 7 2 - 1 7 3 ; M a s s o u d A h m a d z a d e h , Armed Struggle: Both a Strategy and a Tactic (New York: Support Committee for the Iranian People's Struggle, 1971), p. 10 fn. 4 2 . Jazani, Thirty Years' History, pp. 148-151; Anti-Iranian Activities, pp. 16-17, 27-28. 4 3 . Anti-Iranian Activities, p. 61; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 460; various interviews with members of the original Tufan organization after the revolution. 4 4 . Tabari, Contemporary Situation, vol. 2, pt. 2, p. 114. 4 5 . K e s h a v a r z , / Accuse, p. 39; A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p p . 383, 4 5 5 ; R a d m a n e s h , "Dar Bareh Nehzati 21 Azar [About the 12 December Movement]," Donya 6, no. 4 (Winter 1965):9-18. 4 6 . Jazani, Thirty Years' History, pp. 1 - 1 1 , 1 5 2 - 1 5 3 . See also Sepehr Z a b i h , The Left in Contemporary Iran: Ideology, Organization and the Soviet Connection (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1986), pp. 113-115.

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47. H a m i d Ashraf, Jambandiyi Seh Saleh [An Evaluation of Three Years] (Tehran: Negah, 1978), pp. 1 - 1 1 ; see also Amir Parviz Pouyan, On the Necessity of Armed Struggle and Refutation of the Theory of Survival (New York: Support C o m m i t t e e for the Iranian People's Struggle, 1975); A h m a d z a d e h , Armed Struggle. 48. Pouyan, Necessity of Armed Struggle, p. 38; and Jazani, Thirty Years' History. 49. Interviews with P F G O members. 50. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 487. 5 1 . N a b d e l , Azerbaijan, pp. 3 8 - 3 9 ; A n o n y m o u s , "Bohrani Kononi va D o u r n a m a y e h a n [On the C o n t e m p o r a r y Crisis and Projection of Its Future]," Fedayi 78 (June 1981):30, 41; Momeni, Struggle in Kurdistan, p. 61; Ali Akbar Farahani, Anche Yek Enghelabi Bayad Bedanad [What a Revolutionary Must K n o w ] (Tehran: Ahang, 1986), pp. 6 4 - 6 7 ; Jazani, Thirty Years' History, pp. 175-176. 52. Farahani, What a Revolutionary Must Know, p. 11; Hamid Momeni, Roshd-i Egtesadi va Rafah-i Ejtemayi [Economic Growth and Social Welfare] (USA.: PFGO, n.d.). 53. Farahani, What a Revolutionary Must Know, pp. 10-11. 54. Z a b i h , Left in Contemporary Iran, p. 131; and H a m i d M o m e n i , Mogadameyi bar Tarikh [An Introduction to History] (Holland: Rastakhiz-i Siahkal, n.d.). 55. A h m a d z a d e h , Armed Struggle, p. 19. 56. Ashraf, Evaluation of Three Years, p. 92. 57. A h m a d z a d e h , Armed Struggle, pp. 1 - 3 ; on P F G O members' origins, see Zabih, Left in Contemporary Iran, pp. 119-122. 58. Ashraf, Evaluation of Three Years, pp. 4 8 - 4 9 . 59. Zabih, Left in Contemporary Iran, p. 130; Abrahamian, Iran, pp. 4 8 7 488. 60. A s h r a f D e h g a n i , Dar Barayeh Sharayeti Eyni-i Enghelab [On the O b j e c t i v e Conditions of Revolution] (Tehran: People's Fedayin Guerrillas, 1978). 61. Ashraf Dehgani, Sokanrani dar Miting-i Mahabad [Speech in Mahabad] (Rasht: PFG, 1979). 62. People's Fedayin Guerrillas, "Moze-i ma dar Ghebal-i Masaleh-i Melli dar Iran Bettor-i Kolli va dar Kurdistan Bettor-i Moshakas [Our Position Regarding the National Question in Iran in General and Kurdistan in Particular]," Payam-i Fedayi [Fedayi's Message] 1, no. 2 (May 1986):5-8; a letter from the PFG to the author, r e c e i v e d in April 1987, c o n f i r m s this position. See also H a m i d M o m e n i , Pasokh beh Forsatalaban [Answer to the O p p o r t u n i s t s ] ( T e h r a n : Bidsorkhi, 1979). 63. Contemporary Crisis and Projection, p. 41. 64. A n o n y m o u s , Chera dar Entekabat i Majlisi Kebrigan Sherkat Kardim? [Why Did W e Participate in the Election of the Assembly of Experts?] (n.p., P F G O , the Majority, n.d.); Zabih, Left in Contemporary Iran, pp. 1 3 9 - 1 4 6 ; and interviews with former members of the P F G O majority and minority, and other leftist groups. 65. A b r a h a m i a n , Iran, p. 492. 66. Zabih, Left in Contemporary Iran, p. 78. 67. Interview with H a s h e m (pseud.), f o r m e r cell leader of P a y k a r in Kurdistan; Zabih, Left in Contemporary Iran, p. 87. 68. Zahib, p. 79; Contemporary Crisis and Projection.

NOTES

273

69. This information was obtained in interviews with former leading Paykar members. 70. People's Fedayin Guerrilla Organization, untitled leaflet (n.p: PFGO, n.d. [Summer 1979?]). 7 1 . Z a b i h , Left in Contemporary Iran, pp. 8 9 - 9 6 ; People's Fedayin Guerrilla Organization, poster entitled "Mujahedin-i Khalq's Warning to the PFGO about the Situation in Turkman Sahra" (n.p.: PFGO, April 9, 1979). 72. Mojahed Mas'ud Rajavi, Platform of the Provisional Government of the Democratic Islamic Republic of Iran (Long Beach, CA: Moslem Students' Society, 1981); Contemporary Crisis and Projection, p. 41; and Zabih, Left in Contemporary Iran, pp. 89-96. 73. June 27, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 7 4 . Anti-Iranian Activities, esp. p. 4; and interviews with former confederation members. 75. Anti-Iranian Activities, pp. 42, 49; Abrahamian, Iran, p. 464. 76. A b u l h a s s a n Banisadr, Movazeneha [Equilibriums] (n.p., 1978); December 9, 1989, telephone interview with Banisadr. 77. For events in Amul, see Zabih, Left in Contemporary Iran, pp. 160176, also interviews with Paykar members who were given accounts of the Amul uprising by surviving Communist League members. Faqih Hukomati Islami [The 78. R u h o l l a h K h o m e i n i , Velayat-i Guardianship of the Jurist; The Islamic Government] (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1981), p. 41. 79. Ruhollah Khomeini, Melligaraiy [Nationalist Tendency] (Tehran: Amir Kabir, 1983). 80. Khomeini, Guardianship of the Jurist, p. 168. 81. Ibid., p. 23. 82. Ibid., pp. 189-190. 83. See ibid., p. 42.

Ch. 11 Notes 1. Uhlmann, "Patrimonial Leadership," p. 39. 2. J u n e 28, 1987, interview with Sanjabi; for the first time, Sanjabi revealed to the author that Bazargan was the author of this famous letter, but did not sign it for fear of reprisals. 3. Keddie, Roots of Revolution, p. 234. 4. Ibid., pp. 2 4 3 - 2 4 6 . 5. June 28, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 6. Newsweek, July 29, 1978, p. 56. 7. June 28, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 8. I b i d . 9. I b i d . 10. Mehdi Bazargan, Enghelab-i Iran dar Dow Harekat [Iranian Revolution M o v i n g in Two Opposite Directions] (Tehran: Mazaheri, 1984), p. 27; Anonymous, Anche Yek Kargar Bayasti Bedanad [Those Matters Which a Worker Must Know] (Tehran: Bidar, 1978), p. 37. 11. Ibrahim Yazdi, Akarin Talasha dar Akarin Ruzha [The Last Efforts in the Last Days] (Tehran: Galam, 1984); Bazargan, Two Opposite Directions, Abrahamian, Iran, p. 524.

274

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12. S h a h p o u r Bakhtiar, Siyohaft Ruz Pasaz Siyohaft Sal [Thirty-seven Days after Thirty-seven Years] (Paris: n.p., 1983); Shahpour Bakhtiar, Yekrangi [Sincerity] (Paris: n.p., 1982). 13. J u n e 28, 1987, interview with Sanjabi. 14. December 9, 1988, telephone interview with Banisadr. 15. I b i d . 16. J u n e 28, 1987, interview with Sanjabi; October 6, 1986, interview with Farhang. 17. Shaul Bakhash, The Reign of the Ayatollahs (New York: Basic Books, 1984), p. 57; see also Bazargan, Two Opposite Directions. 18. A n o n y m o u s , ed., Asnad va Madarek Sokan Migoyand [Documents and Evidences Speak], 2d ed. (Iranian Students Confederation in the U.S.A, n.d.), vol. 1, p. 20; Anonymous, ed., Kurdistan va Sheikh Ezzuldin Husseini [Kurdistan and Sheikh Ezzuldin Husseini] (Tehran: Mardom, n.d.). 19. I n t e r v i e w s and c o r r e s p o n d e n c e with M o g h a d d a m , e s p e c i a l l y his October 11, 1986, letter. 20. Bazargan, Two Opposite Directions', interviews with various members of leftist organizations which took part in these uprisings. 2 1 . E h s a n Tabari, Darki Masaeli Hadi Enghelabi Iran [Some Controversial Issues of the Iranian Revolution] (Tehran: Tudeh, Summer 1979), pp. 7 - 8 , 10-14, 76, 79, 9 4 - 9 7 ; October 6, 1986, interview with Farhang. 22. Noruldin Kianouri, Porseh va Pasokh [Questions and Answers] (Tehran: Tu deh Party of Iran, 1981). 23. Interview with M. Hashem (pseud.), August 1, 1988. 24. Gary Sick, "Iran's Quest for Superpower Status," Foreign Affairs 65, no. 4 (Spring 1987):697-715. 25. Quoted in Ulyanovsky, Revolutionary Process, p. 28; see also Zotov, Lenin's Doctrine. 26. U l y a n o v s k y , Revolutionary Process, p. 28. 27. Interview with Said Rajai Khorasani, then Iran's ambassador to the UN, on July 23, 1986; N o v e m b e r 19, 1986, letter from Arabajan in Moscow. 28. G e o r g i A r b a t o v and W i l l e m Oltmans, The Soviet Vievjpoint (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1983), esp. pp. 55, 193, 199; Jonathan R. Adelman, "The Soviet U s e of Force: Four Cases of Soviet Decision-Making" (Unpublished MS, S u m m e r 1985), pp. 3 3 - 3 4 . 29. Iran Times 16 (February 27, 1987):2, 15; the relation remains strained as of this writing. For example, see Kayhan Havayi [Air Kayhan], April 15, 1984, p. 5. 3 0 . New York Times, July 20, 1988, p. 16; and August 9, 1988, p. 6; August 6, 1988, conversation with C P S U central c o m m i t t e e m e m b e r Dimitry Lisolovisk. 31. New York Times, September 25, 1988, pp. 1, 8. 32. Washington Post, April 3, 1988, sect. A, p. 22. 3 3 . New York Times, June 6, 1988: 1, A - 1 0 ; July 19, 1988: A - 8 ; July 21, 1988: 1, A - 8 ; S e p t e m b e r 25, 1988: 1, 8; and Fred Halliday, "Iran's New Grand Strategy," Middle East Report Information Project 144 (Januarv/February 1987):7. 34. Iran Times, July 22, 1988, p. 5; Kayhan Havayi, September 14, 1988, p. 3. 35. Kayhan Havayi, August 26, 1988, pp. 2, 14. 36. Ibid. 37. Iran Times, September 26, 1988, pp. 1, 11, 14.

NOTES

275

38. Ibid., August 29, 1988, pp. 1, 2; and September 2, 1988, pp. 1, 11, 118. 39. 40. 41. (January

Kayhan Havayi, September 14, 1988, p. 4. Kayhan Havayi, September 14, 1988, p. 3. James A. Bill, "The Politics of Extremism in Iran," Current 1982):9-14.

History

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Index

Abbas I (Shah), 3 Adalat Party, 58-60, 64, 66, 84, 85; see also Persian Communist Party ADP. See Azerbaijan Democratic Party Afghanistan, 17, 26, 75, 117, 153, 183, 203, 222 Afshar Tribe, 3 Agayev, Bahram, 58 Agayev, Kamran, 66, 81 Agazadeh, 81 Agriculture, 4, 103, 162, 164, 200, 205, and agribusiness, 198, 200; see also Peasants, Landlords, Land Reform Ahmad Ahmadi (General), 167 Ahmad (shah), 42, 69-71, 97 Ahmadzadeh, Massoud, 208-210 AIOC. See Anglo-Iranian Oil Company al-Afghani. See Jamal ed-Din, Sayyid al-Ahmad, Jalal, 176, 183, 195 Alexander II (tsar), 25 Alexander III (tsar), 25 al-Motakellamin, Nasrollah Malek, 29, 39 al-Mulk, Naser, 42 Alavi, Bozorg, 114, 172 Alavi, Morteza, 113-114 Algeria, 213 Ali (Imam), 2, 173, 215 Allen, George V., 133, 152, 153 Allied Invasion of Iran (1941), 113, 119-120, 122, 142 Amin al-Sultan (Atabak-i Azam), 37-38 Amini, Abul Qassem, 150 Amini, Ali, 102, 150-152, 191-194, 217, 218 Amir Kabir. See Taqi Khan Amnesty International, 216 Amouzegar, Jamshid, 217-218 285

Ana Deli, 41 Anarchism, 20, 51, 79 Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, 72, 148; and labor movement, 113, 117, 151; and Mossadegh, 181, 182, 184-186, and Reza Shah, 103; and Soviet foreign policy, 190 Anglo-Persian Oil Company. See Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Anjomans, 32-42, 48, 113, 141, 180 Ansari, Ali, 69 Anushiravan, 97 Arab-Israeli Ear (1973), 199 Arab People, 46, 112, 145, 201, 222 Arabic Language, 124, 170 Arani, Tagi, 113-115, 126, 132 Arbatov, Georgi, 11, 224 Ardabil, 42, 88, 167, 169 Arfa, Hassan, General, 100, 103, 149, 155 Aristocrats, 32-33; See also Landlords, Upper Class. Armenian Language, 107, 145, 149, 170. Armenian people, 19, 20, 26, 41, 43, 92, 115; in Azerbaijan, 47, 90, 160, 162, 164, 168, 170, 175; radicalism, 33, 67, 68, 90; versus Moslems, 47, 98, 107, 122, 128, 129, 143, 173, 175 Arsanjani, Hassan, 192 "Aryans": and Iran, 106 As'ad, Amir, 124 Asadabad, 25 Ashraf, Hamid, 208-210 Ashura, 95 Assad, Sardar, 42 Assembly for Recognizing the Competency of the System, 225 Assembly of Guardians, 225

286

INDEX

Association of University Students, 213 Assyrian language, 107, 145, 149 Assyrian people, 3, 47, 107; in Azerbaijan, 98, 160, 168; and Kurds, 107, 123, 164; and Moslems, 122, 129, 143, 168, 170, 175 Atabak-i Azam. See Amin al-Sultan Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal, 7, 10, 76, 94, 100, 108, 110, 180 Atlantic Charter, 141, 153 Authority, and landlord-peasant relationship, 4 - 5 ; and religion, 6 Azadistan, 57 Azalism. See Babism Azerbaijan, 3, 6 - 8 , 22, 23, 25, 27, 70, 72, 89, 90, 112, 115, 186, 199; in Constitutional Revolution, 3 2 43; culture, 18-21, 25, 29, 30, 5 0 51, 122-123, 170, 173; economy, 18-21, 101, 109, 138, 139; and 1919 Treaty, 5 6 - 5 7 ; 1 9 4 5 - 1 9 4 6 revolution and autonomous government, 1, 9, 116, 141, 143— 147, 149, 157, 1 5 9 - 1 6 2 , 165-169, 172, 174-178, 210; and Islamic Revolution, 2 2 0 - 2 2 2 ; and Reza Shah, 101, 1 0 7 - 1 0 9 ; segmentation, 14, 98; and Soviet Union, 122, 143-147, 249; State A n j o m a n of, 33, 36, 3 8 - 4 2 ; and Tudeh, 128-133, 1 3 9 - 1 4 1 , 1 7 1 - 1 7 2 , 1 7 5 - 1 7 7 ; in World War I, 4 6 ^ 7 , 52 Azerbaijan Democratic Party, 85, 167; Khiabani's, 5 7 - 5 8 , 60, 88; and central government, 141, 144, 150, 151, 169, 170, 201, 204; composition, 162; and Kurdistan, 1 4 2 - 1 4 3 ; program, 1 6 0 - 1 6 1 ; radicalism, 167-169, 172, 174; and Soviet Union, 144, 175; and Tudeh, 116, 139-140, 142, 144, 152, 1 7 1 173, 208, 222 Azerbaijan, Soviet. See Soviet Azerbaijan Azeri: language, 3, 20, 30, 32, 36, 41, 59, 67, 80, 1 0 7 - 1 0 8 , 123, 128, 132, 140, 141, 149, 170, 171, 175, 196, 208, 221; literature, 29, 36, 41 Azeri people, 63, 93, 123-124, 161, 162, 171, 175; radicalism among, 1 8 - 2 1 , 25, 2 9 - 3 0 , 3 2 ^ t 3 , 46, 47, 51, 58, 59, 68, 80, 114-115, 126,

128, 129, 132, 133, 139, 149, 166-168, 274, 196, 211; and Reza Shah, 101, 107-109, 121, 174; tension with Kurds, 14, 15, 47, 58, 108, 142, 143, 164, 175 Azhari, Gholam Reza, 218 Azhir, 116, 129 Azizbekov, M., 34 Ba'ath Party (Iraq), 201, 223 Bab. See Babism Baba Shaikh (Hajji), 159, 163 Babism, 25, 26, 37, 39 Baghdad, 118; Pact, 188, 191 Baghirov, Ja'far, 142, 144, 147, 174 Baha'ullah, 25 Bahais, 3, 26, 183, 215 Bahar, Mohammad Taqi, 31, 35, 42, 45, 50, 150, 169, 170 Baheri, Mohammad, 203 Bahrein, 17, 117, 183 Bakhtiar, Shahpour, 152, 191, 217, 219, 220 Bakhtiar, Teymour (General), 189 Bakhtiari tribe, 14, 17, 42, 44, 69, 98, 101, 112 Baku, 20, 40, 52, 54, 59, 61, 67, 68, 8 3 - 8 5 , 139, 142, 148; see also Congress of the Peoples of the East Balfour, Alfred, 55 Balfour, James, 55 Baluchis, 3, 98, 112, 201, 222 Baluchistan, 3, 22, 110, 153, 178, 221, 222 Banani, Amin, 101 Bandarlangeh, 33, 222 Banisadr, Abolhasam, 213, 221, 222 Baqai, Muzaffar, 183, 187 Baqer Khan, 40, 43, Barzanis, 164, 169, 175 Bayat, Morteza, 136 Bazaar. See Bazaaris; Class Structure; Middle Class Bazaaris, 16, 68, 102, 112, 173; in Azerbaijan, 48, 168; in Kurdistan, 48, 165, 173; in Constitutional Revolution, 3 0 - 3 2 , 36, 42; and Islamic Revolution, 209, 215; and Mohammad Reza Shah, 200, 203, 2 0 5 - 2 0 6 , 215; and Mossadegh, 182, 183, 187 Bazargan, Mehdi, 125, 183, 191, 194, 208, 211, 216, 217, 2 2 0 - 2 2 2

INDEX

BBC. See British Broadcasting Corporation Behbehani, Sayyid Abdullah (Ayatollah), 43, 51 Beheshti, Mohammad (Ayatollah), 220, 221, 225 Behrangi, Samad, 196 Biriya, Mohammad, 134, 160, 175 Black Friday, 218 Blumkin, Iakov, 79 Bolshevik Revolution, 45, 54, 55, 5 8 -

60

Bolsheviks, 34, 41, 47, 58, 59, 64, 79 Burujerdi, Hossein (Ayatollah), 214 Bourgeoisie. See Middle Class Bravin, Karl, 54 Britain, 9, 10, 45, 48, 140, 142, 161, 169; economic ties to Iran, 16, 23, 44, 73, 76, 90, 116; influence on Iranian politics, 2 6 - 2 7 , 30-32, 116, 125, 131, 136, 137, 145-149; and Jangalis, 63-67; relations with Russia (and Soviet Union), 16-23, 26, 38-39, 43, 44, 47, 61, 63-65, 67, 69, 71, 73, 75, 77, 83, 84, 86, 89, 92, 122, 134-136, 145-149, 154-155, 157-158; and Reza Shah, 70, 71; in southern Iran, 13, 17, 145, 152; troops, 23, 46, 47, 54, 56, 61, 66, 71, 75; and United States, 72, 73, 77, 122, 134-136, 145-146, 153-158 British Broadcasting Corporation, 119, 147, 152 Bukan, 128 Bureaucracy, 23, 25, 205, 218, 223 Bushehr, 152 Byrnes, James, 153 Carter, Jimmy, 216, 219, 224 Caspian: fisheries, 18, 185; region, 2, 19, 22, 61, 102, 118, 126, 132, 210, 214; Sea, 61, 71, 102 Caucasus, 52, 54, 183; economic relations with, 17, 20-22; and Iranian radicalism, 29, 30, 33-35, 41^*3, 49, 58-60, 128, 166 CCFTU. See Central Council of Federated Trade Unions Central Council of Federated Trade Unions, 74, 128, 130, 139, 149, 151, 171

287

Central Intelligence Agency, 188 Central Treaty Organization, 190 Chahbahar (naval base), 201 Chamran, Mustafa, 213 Chaqueri, Chosroe, 49 Chicherin, Georgi, 61, 69, 89 China, 86, 181, 207, 223 Churchill, Winston, 119, 134, 157 CIA. See Central Intelligence Agency Clergy, 63, 68, 98, 112, 125, 129, 167; and bazaar, 173, 206, 218; and Islamic Revolution, 219, 220; and land reform, 193, 214; and Mohammad Reza Shah, 179, 193, 195 Cold war, 10-11, 145, 153-154, 157158 Committee for the Defense of Freedom and Human Rights in Iran, 216 Committee for the Resurrection of Kurdistan, 123 Communist International (Comintern), 62, 63, 76, 78; Third, 62, 78, 85; Sixth Congress of, 76; Seventh Congress of, 191 Communist League of Iran, 214 Communist Party of the Soviet Union: Twenty-sixth Congress, 224 Communist Youth League of Iran, 6 7 68 Company of Kurdish Progress, 164 Confederation of Iranian Students, 213-214, 216 Confederation of Kermanshah and Western Tribes, 152 Congress of the Peoples of the East (Baku), 83-85, 88 Constitution (Iran), 31-32, 36, 37, 44; Islamic, 221-222; and oil, 32^17 Constitutional Revolution (Iran), 1, 2, 9, 14, 20, 25, 28, 60, 69; and Azerbaijan, 29, 32-43; and bazaaris, 30-32; political parties in, 33-36; and religion, 9, 31, 32, 34, 36, 3 9 43, 125, 219, 227; and Reza Khan, 94, 96, 97, 101 Constitutional Revolution (Russia), 29, 33, 35, 38 Cossack Brigade, 23, 39, 69, 70, 89, 99 Cotton, 16 Coup d'état (1921), 70 Curzon, George (Lord), 17, 55, 69, 70

288

INDEX

D'Arcy Concession, 10, 23, 37, 136. See also Oil Daik-i Nishtiman, 142 Daneshyan, Gulamyahyah, 132, 140, 160, 172, 175, 208 Dar al-Fonun, 22, 23, 25, 26, 31 Dashnaks, 41, 43 Dashti, Ali, 149 Davar, Ali Akbar, 96, 100, 105, 110 Dehbokri tribe, 124 Dehgani, Ashraf, 210, 212 Dehkoda, Ali Akbar Khan, 36 Democratic Party of Iran, 42-44; and Bolsheviks, 47—48; factionalism within, 50-52, 56, 94; and Germany, 45-47; and Jangalis, 5 0 52, 67; and 1919 Treaty, 56, 57; of Qavam, 150 Derakhshesh, Mohammad, 217 Donya, 114 Douglas, William O., 162, 180 Dowlatabadi, Mirza Yahya, 28, 36 Dreyfus, Louis, 134 Dunsterville, L. C „ 52, 54 East Germany, 190 Ebling, Samuel G., 122, 138 Economy, 1970s: boom, 199-204, 206; and agriculture, 200-201; and foreign policy, 201, 203; bust, 204-206, 216, 218 Economic modernization, 101-103, 112, 121; agriculture versus industry, 121, 200, 201, 204; centralism in, 101-102, 108-109, 112, 200; and foreign policy, 226; urban versus rural, and culture, 204 Education, 16, 19, 22-23, 28, 104, 121, 211, 223; chauvinism in, 107108; in Azerbaijan, 57, 107-108, 138, 140, 160, 161, 177; in Kurdistan, 163; and women, 57, 104, 110 Edwards, A.C., 101, 150 Eftekhari, Yousef, 113, 115, 131 Egypt, 26, 203 Ehsanollah Khan, 51-53, 60, 64, 66, 67, 7 8 - 8 2 , 8 6 - 9 0 Emigrant Government, 46, 47 Enclosure movement (England), 15,

201

Energy crisis (1970s), 199 Engels, Friedrich, 62

Enzeli, 47, 52, 54, 61, 63, 67, 68, 77, 78, 89 Eqbal, Manucher, 179 Equilibrium, 13, 45, 52, 60, 69, 77, 144; defined, 10, and internal politics, 23, 187, 196, 223, 226; negative, 10, 22, 158, 213; and Mossadegh, 10, 158, 182-183, 185, 187, 211; and Islamic Republic, 223, 226; positive, 10, 17, 18, 22, 23, 44, 228 Etiehad-i Islam, 50, 52 Ettela'at, 107, 120, 170, 179, 217 Factionalism. See Segmentation Falacci, Oriana, 197 Farahani, Ali Akbar, 209 Farahani, Gaem Magam, 19, 22 Farhang, Mansour, 1, 221 Farmanfarma, Mohammad Vali, 150 Farsi, 6, 30-32, 35, 41, 52, 59, 123, 124, 132, 166, 170, 171 Fascism, 93, 106-107, 113, 183 Fateh, Mustafah, 186 Fatemi, Hussein, 180, 191 Fath Ali (shah), 16, 18 Falwa, 27, 167 February Revolution (Russian), 47, 48, 54, 79 Fedayin-i Islam, 173, 183 Fereydoun, 97 Fifty-Three, the Group of, 114-116, 126; see also Tudeh Party Finkenstein, Treaty of (1807), 18 Firuz, Muzaffar, 125, 150, 151, 155 Firuz, Nosrat al-Dowleh, 55, 69, 110 Fomenat, 82 Foreign policy: concepts in, British, 9 - 1 1 ; Iranian, 10; of U.S., 9, 11, 12; Soviet, 9 - 1 2 ; and oil, 10; and cold war, 11-12; and internal affairs, 13-14, 17, 23, 30, 38, 39, 43, 44, 55, 70, 71, 77, 186, 223, 226, 228 Foruhar, Dariush, 183, 191 Forutan, Ghulam Hussein, 207 France, 18, 26, 49, 51, 56, 203, 213, 218, 219 Freedom Movement, 194, 195, 208,

220

Freemasons. See Masons French Oil Company, 190 French Revolution, 35

INDEX Garbzadegi, 195 Gendarmes, 124, 139, 180 Germany, 201; as apolitical model, 25, 106-108; as a third power, 10, 25, 38, 39, 45, 46, 106, 112, 113 Ghafar Zadeh, Assadullah, 58, 59 Ghassemi, Ahmad, 126, 176, 207 Ghassemlou, Abdulrahman, 207 Gilan, 115, 124, 174; climate and economy, 6, 19, 22; culture and literature, 6, 19-22, 29; in Constitutional Revolution, 33-35, 42-44; revolution in, 1, 8, 9, 13, 42, 64, 65, 86, 94, 98, 102, 114, 115, 136, 154, 174, 177, 223, 228; and Jangal movement and Gilan Republic, 8, 48-53, 62, 65-68, 70, 76-83, 86-92; "Red" government, 79-83, 99, 102; and Soviet Union, 61-69, 73-77, 86, 89; and Islamic Revolution, 222 Gilani Red Army (Iranian Red Army), 65, 67, 68, 79, 80 Gobadian, 152 Golesorkhi, Chosroe, 196 Gotbzadeh, Sadeq, 213, 222 Government monopolies, 101, 109; see also Economy Grady, Henry, 181 Graham, Robert, 206 Grey, Sir Edward, 38 Guardianship of the Jurist, 214-215 Haj, Mir, 123 Hakimi, Ibrahim, 122, 136, 146-148, 158 Halala, 165 Hamadan, 25, 213 Hanifnezhad, Mohammad, 211 Haqiqat, 1A Hassan-i Mojtahed, Mirza, 51 Haydar Khan, 35, 38^41, 43, 83-92, 131, 175, 222 Hedayat, Mehdiquli, 61 Hedayat Mosque, 191 Health, 23, 138 Helal-Naseri, M„ 130 Hemmat, 34 Hew a Party, 123, 164 Hitler, Adolf, 106, 112, 114, 119 Hitler Youth, 118 Homayounpour, Parviz, 163, 164 Hostage crisis, 222, 223

289

House of Oblivion, 26 Hoveyda, Amir Abbas, 198 Husseini, Ezzudin, 221 Ilkhanizadeh, Abdulrahman, 163 Ilkhanizadeh, Ismail Aga, 163 Imamat, 212, 215; defined, 2 Imami, Jamal, 188 Imami, Sharif, 192, 218 Imbrie, Robert (Major), 73 Imperial calendar, 217, 218 Imperial Bank, 17, 67, 102, 116 Imperial Guard, 205, 220 India, 17, 23, 26, 38, 55, 62, 66, 203 Industry, 15, 16, 19, 20, 23, 199, 200 International Commission of Jurists. 216 Iran Party, 183, 192, 213 Iran-contra scandal, 224 Iran-Iraq war, 222-226 Iranian army, 2, 14, 22, 23, 47, 55, 89, 92, 93, 96, 97, 99, 103-104, 106, 111, 113, 119-120, 155, 197, 201, 218-220, 222, 223; Mohammad Reza Shah, 180, 184, 185, 19-88, 189, 191, 194 Iranian nationalism, 7, 56, 67, 94, 97, 98, 124, 146, 148; and Azerbaijan revolution, 170, 171, 178; liberal, 181, 186, 187, 190, 196; and religion, 2, 26-28, 182, 187, 194196, 217, 218; see also Persian chauvinism Iranian Students' Confederation, 195, 213, 216, 217 Iraq, 19, 26, 117-118, 164, 165, 175, 201, 209, 214, 218, 223; see also Iran-Iraq War Ironside, Edmund (General), 6 9 - 7 0 Isfahan, 23, 26, 42, 112, 128, 180 Isfahani, Jamal al-Din, 28 Isfandiyari, Hassan Khan, 98 Iskandani (Major), 127, 137 Iskandari, Iraj, 126, 190 Iskandari, Suleiman Mirza, 28, 44, 46, 52, 75, 94, 95, 97, 126 Iskandari, Yahya Mirza, 28 Iskra, 20, 59 Islam, 61, 142; and authority, 2, 6, 165, 212, 214, 215; and Iranian nationalism, 124, 187, 194, 214, 227; and Islamic Republic, 2 1 4 215, 221, 225; and Pahlavis, 110,

290

INDEX

182, 183; and private property, 49, 81, 82, 167, 168; and revolutionaries, 9, 59, 63, 81, 86, 1 6 7 - 1 6 8 , 174, 2 1 1 - 2 1 2 ; Shi'i, 2 - 4 , 6, 95, 96, 124; versus Sunni, 15, 26, 51, 52, 124, 220, 221 Islamic Anjoman, 34, 40, 41 Islamic calendar, 206 Islamic Constitution, 215, 221, 2 2 2 Islamic Republic, 125, 215, 2 2 0 - 2 2 7 Islamic Revolution, 1, 14, 182, 183, 196, 214, 2 1 6 - 2 1 9 , 229; alternate power centers in, 220, 221; and cities, 204; and class structure, 206, 223; ethnic troubles, 2 2 1 - 2 2 2 ; radical phase, 2 2 2 - 2 2 3 ; secular forces versus religious, 191, 2 2 0 222 Islamic Students' Society, 213, 214, 216; and Air Force technicians, 205, 214, 219 Israel, 214, 215 Italy, 106, 118 Izvolsky, A. P., 38 J2 Bureau, 197 Jahangir Khan, 39 Jahanshahlou, Nosratollah, 140, 165 Jaleh Square, 218 Jam, 97 Jamal ed-Din, Sayyid (al-Afghani), 2 5 28 Jams, Mahmood, 110 Jangal: movement, 4 8 - 5 3 , 60, 63, 64, 66, 144; m o d e m , 222; newspaper, 52, 66; 1945, 143 Jangali, Ismail, 64 Japan, 28, 29, 38, 106, 118, 223 Jews, 3, 33, 164, 215 Jizani, Bijan, 2 0 8 - 2 1 0 Jolfa, 19 Jowdat, Hussein, 35 Judicial reform (under Reza Shah), 105— 106, 121 Kadkhodas, 5, 14, 111, 126 Kambaksh, Abdol Samad, 128, 176, 190 Kangavari, H a j Mohammad, 66, 81 Karakhan, Lev Mikhailovich, 61, 65 Karbala-yi, H a j Ali, 3 5 - 3 6 Kashani, Abul Qassem (Ayatollah), 113, 1 8 2 - 1 8 7 , 191, 194, 213, 214

Kasma, 53 Kasravi, Ahmad, 58, 94, 170, 173 Katouzian, Homayoun, 109 Kautsky, Karl, 41 Kaveh, 45-16 Kaviyan, Ja'far, 139, 160, 166 Kavtaradze, 133, 135 Kayhart, 169, 170 Kazerun, 152 KDP. See Kurdish Democratic Party Kemalism. See Ataturk, Mustafa Kemal Kennan, George, 11, 135 Kennedy, John F., 192, 194 Kerensky, Alexander, 47, 220 Kerman, 183 Kermani, Nazem al-Islam, 28 Kermanshah, 46, 207 Keshavarz, Fereydoun, 135, 151, 207 Keshtgar, Ali, 210 Khalu Gorban, 53, 79, 80 Khamci, Anvar, 171, 176 Khamenei, Ali, 220, 225, 226 Khamseh tribe, 46 Khans, 14, 22, 42, 44 Khiabani, M o h a m m a d , 40, 44, 48, 52, 5 6 - 5 8 , 60, 88, 131, 139, 140 Khomeini, Ruhollah (Ayatollah), 173, 194, 212, 2 1 4 - 2 2 8 Khorasan, 3, 15, 32, 35, 72, 8 8 - 8 9 , 92, 98, 137, 143, 172; division revolt, 172, 222, 137, 143 Khoshtaria, Akaky Medievich, 10, 23, 47, 72, 7 3 Khrushchev, Nikita, 207 Khuzistan, 3, 16, 46, 119, 128, 152, 170, 172 Khianouri, Nuraldin, 177, 181, 185, 190 Kissinger, Henry, 201 Kohlar tribe, 131 Kolomiitsev, V. I., 55 Komoleh, 123, 128, 142, 143, 163, 164 Krassin, Leonid, 69 Kuchik Khan, 48, 49, 60, 142, 144, 175; in Constitutional Revolution, 42, 49, 60; relations with Soviets and Iranian communists, 8, 52, 6 3 68, 74, 78, 79, 8 2 - 9 1 ; and religion, 49, 50, 53, 61, 83, 90, 91 Kur Oglu, 40 Kurdish Democratic Party, 273, 206, 207, 221

INDEX Kurdish language, 107, 123, 133, 149 Kurdistan, 1, 3, 4, 14, 19, 47, 9 1 - 9 3 , 146, 256, 183; autonomous government, 48, 143, 149, 154, 165, 1 2 3 - 1 2 4 , 138, 142, 159, 1 6 3 165, 169; e c o n o m y , 109, 110, 200; and Khomeini, 210, 2 2 1 - 2 2 2 , 228; population, 6; relations with Azerbaijan, 110, 162, 168, 175; under Reza Shah, 98, 108-110, 143; and Soviets, 122, 142, 144-147, 155; and radicals, 128, 169, 207, 209, 210, 213; revolution, 1, 143, 144, 147, 163, 165; southern, 131, 134, 207, 213 Kurds, 1, 3, 4, 6, 201; ethnic tension with other groups, 14, 15, 47, 53, 68, 80, 90, 108, 162, 168, 175, 209; Shi'ite, 123, 207, 221; tribes, 46, 47, 48, 88, 98, 131, 134, 163, 164, 175, 177 Kursk, 64, 68 Labour Party (British), 185 Ladjevardi, Habib, 131 Lahuti, Abolgasem, 83, 88, 139 Lambton, Ann, 1, 112, 124 Landlords, 4, 5, 14, 16, 3 2 - 3 4 , 41, 43, 49, 52, 8 2 - 8 2 , 111, 132, 139, 140, 143, 164, 167, 1 8 4 - 1 8 6 , 1 9 2 194, 204 Land redistribution or reform, 30, 8 1 82, 87, 92, 160, 161, 167, 168, 180, 181, o, 1963, 5, 150, 1 9 2 194, 198, 200, 201, 204, 209, 214 Lankaran Committee of the Communist Party, 63 Lansing, Robert, 56 Lawyers' Association, 216 League of Nations, 56, 68 Legal code. See Judicial reform and Shari'a Lenin, Vladimir Ilich, 8 - 9 , 45, 147, 224; April theses, 79; surplus value theory, 59; theories on revolution, 6 2 - 6 2 , 67, 78, 79; on Iran, 54, 89 Liberation Movement, 213, 216 Literacy, 103, 104, 193, 194. See also Education Lurs, 3, 4, 53, 98, 112 M a h a b a d , 108, 112, 123, 124, 131, 142, 143, 147, 156, 163, 174, 177,

291

220, 221 Mahmoud, Mahmoud, 35, 150 Majlis, 72, 74, 148, 180, 181; 1st, 3 0 - 3 3 , 35, 37; 2nd, 35, 4 2 - 4 4 , 95; 4th, 95; 5th, 9 5 - 9 7 , 99; 13th, 124; 14th, 125, 127, 131, 135, 139; 15th, 401; 17th, 1 8 6 - 1 8 8 ; 21st, 206 Makki, Hussein, 183, 187 Maleki, Khalil, 132, 140, 175, 176, 183, 184, 187, 188 Malik, Hossein, 176 M a l k u m Khan, 2 5 - 2 7 , 36 Mansur, Hassan, 194 Maoism, 207, 213 Mardom Party, 195 Marx, Karl, 8, 9, 62. See also Marxism Marxism, 57, 58, 7 4 - 7 6 , 82, 85, 91, 123, 165, 192, 195, 207, 208, 213, 223; and culture, 8, 9; and nationalism, 9, 62, 63, 76; and religion, 9, 187, 211 Mashad, 35, 89, 110, 111, 135, 209, 217 Masons, 26, 32 Masoud Mirza Zel al-Sultan, 23 M a x i m o v , Mikhail A., 148 Mazandaran, 22, 55, 128, 143, 209 Melliyun Party, 192 Merchant Association of the Bazaar, 183 Mesopotamia, 27 Middle class, 6 3 - 6 5 , 67, 76, 78, 84, 85, 112, 121, 125; lack of development, 15, 16, 44; modern, 7, 205, 229; lower, 205, 206, 211, 214, 218, 229; upper, 204, 229; and M o h a m m a d Reza Shah, 2 0 3 - 2 0 6 ; in National Front, 182-183, 186, 190; and religion, 182-183, 1 9 3 - 1 9 5 ; in revolutionary activities, 3 0 - 3 2 , 1 1 2 - 1 1 4 , 163, 165, 211, 214, 218; in united fronts, 8, 63, 7 5 - 7 6 , 126, 144 Millspaugh, Arthur, 99, 103, 120, 134, 136 Moderate Party, 36, 4 1 - 4 4 , 46, 47, 49, 51, 56, 60, 79, 9 4 - 9 6 Modernization, 7, 75; see also Economy, Education, Judicial Reform M o g h a d d a m , Rahmatollah, 216, 217 Mohajers, 43, 112; in Azerbaijan, 123, 128, 160, 164, 1 6 6 - 1 6 8 , 173, 174;

292

INDEX

in Gilan, 66, 68, 80, 86, 90, 128 Mohammad Ali (shah), 36-42 Mohammad (mirza), 22 Mohammad Reza Shah, 120, 124; control techniques, 149, 151, 154155, 173, 197-199, 202, 204, 221, 227; economy, 192-194, 199-202, 204, 206, 227; and foreign policy, 202, 203, 223, 227; and National Front, 186-189, 191-195; and opposition groups, 207-214, 2 1 6 219, 227; and Razmara, 179-182; and Tudeh, 128, 133, 140, 206, 207, 213 Mohammadi, Mirza, 86 Mohammad-i Shirazi, Sayyid Ali, 25 Mohtashami, Ali Akbar, 25-27 Molotov, V. M., 144, 147, 148 Morris, Leland, 154 Mossadegh, Mohammad, 71, 91, 94, 97, 98, 125, 144, 175, 178, 196; and British, 131, 136; and equilibrium, 10, 135, 136, 158, 182; influence of, on subsequent liberals, 191, 211, 213, 219; internal reform of, 186, 187; and National Front, 56, 158, 182-189; and oil nationalization, 184-186; overthrow of, 188-189; and Soviets, 136, 137; and Tudeh, 131, 133, 187, 188, 190, 192 Mudarres, Sayyed Hassan (Ayatollah), 46-47, 91, 94, 96, 98, 136, 158 Mujahedin-i Khalq, 211-214, 219, 222, 223 Mullah Amu, 4 Mullah Nasr al-Din, 29, 36 Musavi, Ali, 225-227 Mushaver al-Mamalek (Ali Ansari), 69 Mushir al-Dowleh, 37, 69, 158 Mustafa, Mulla, 164, 169 Mustofi, Mirza Hassan, 124 Mustofi al-Mamalek, 43, 46, 96, Muzaffar al-Din (shah), 23, 28, 31, 32, 36 Na'ini, Mohammad Hussein, 37 Nabdel, Ali Reza, 208-210 Nahzieh, Hassan, 216 Najaf, 39, 42, 43 Nakhshab, 213 Nameh-i Mardom, 176 Narimanov, Nariman, 34-35

Naser al-Din (shah), 13, 23-28, 37 National Bank, 102, 106 National Front, 35, 56, 112, 136, 158, 182-189; component parties of, 125, 182-184, 213; disintegration and failure, 187-188, 205, 211; successor organizations, 191-193, 208, 213, 216-220, 222 National Iranian Oil Company, 218 National Party of Iran, 113, 183 National Resistance Movement, 191 National Revolt of July 21st, 186, 188 National Will Party, 125, 134 Nationalism. See Iranian nationalism; Persian chauvinism Nazism, 106, 107, 112, 113, 119 Negahdar, Farokh, 210 New Economic Policy (NEP), 86, 87 Nihilism, 28, 29, 51 1907 Treaty (Russia and Britain), 38, 39, 43, 44, 46, 47, 74, 136, 147 1916 Treaty, 47 1919 Treaty (Britain and Iran), 9, 5 3 55, 57, 60, 61, 64, 65, 69-71, 76, 77 1921 Treaty (Soviet Union and Iran), 71, 73, 75, 77, 118, 185, 224 Nixon, Richard, 201 No Bahar, 50 No Ruzeh Iran, 140 Noel, E. (Captain), 52, 70 North, Oliver, 226 Northern Iran: economic and cultural distinctness, 6, 18-22, 29; versus Southern Iran, 18-22 Northern Oil Concession, 7 2 - 7 3 NRM. See National Resistance Movement Nuri, Sheikh Fazlollah, 37-40, 42 Oil, 19, 23, 76, 77, 113, 117, 119, 120, 181; in Baku, 54, 61; and economy, in 1970s, 199-204, 206; and Islamic republic, 223; and nationalization, 10, 182, 184-186, 188; 1944 crisis, 133, 189; in northern Iran, 47, 72-73, 118, 133, 135, 148, 153; and military strategy, 54, 61, 153, 155, 156; see also Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Oman, 201 Ono, Morio, 5 Opium, 16, 101

INDEX

Orzhonikidze, Sergei, 41, 42, 61, 64, 65, 67, 78, 79, 91 Ottoman Empire, 17, 22; see also Turkey Ovanessian, Ardeshir, 113, 115, 116, 126, 127, 129, 131, 139 Pact of Steel, 118 Pahlavi dynasty. See Reza (shah) Pahlavi; Mohammad Reza (shah) Pahlavi Pahlavi Foundation, 198 Pakistan, 203 Palestine, 72, 120, 125 Pan-Islamism, 26, 2 , 52, 224 Pan-Turanism, 52 Paris Peace Conference (1919), 56 Pasdaran, 221, 223, 225 Paykar, 212, 223 Pavlovich, M., 81 PCP. See Persian Communist Party. Peasants; 4, 16, 17, 23, 30, 33; and authority, 46, 81, 82; and Communists, 7, 8, 65, 67, 76, 81, 82, 84, 87, 92, 126, 128, 129; and Khiabani, 57, 59; Kuchik Khan, 46, 49, 50, 65; middle, 82, 124, 193, 200; and Reza Shah, 103, 111 People's Congress of Azerbaijan, 141 People's Fedayin Guerrillas, 210, 221, 229 People's Fedayin Guerrilla Organization, 208-212, 219, 220, 223; factions in, 210 Persian chauvinism, 7, 107-108, 209; see also Iranian nationalism Persian Communist Party, 20, 35, 63, 67, 68, 75, 76, 7 8 - 8 7 , 89-91, 95, 140, 151, 156; continuity and conflict with the Tudeh, 113, 116, 126, 132, 189; see also Adalat Pesyan, Mohammad Taqi (Colonel), 46, 88 PFG. See People's Fedayin Guerrillas PFGO. See People's Fedayin Guerrilla Organization Pink, Ivor, 134 Population, 200 Pishevari, Seyyed Ja'far, 59, 74, 80, 84, 90, 95, 113, 115, 116; and autonomous government, 159-161, 166, 174, 175; and Tudeh, 116, 129, 131, 132, 138, 139, 141,

293

170-172 Plekhanov, Georgi, 41 Postal service, 23 Potsdam, 146 Pouyan, Amir Parviz, 208-210 Pravda, 54, 73 Progress Party. See Tajaddod Party Punishment Committee, 51 Qajar dynasty, 1-3, 14-18, 22, 25, 44, 96-99, 108, 110, 150, 156, 198 Qanun, 27 Qashqai people, 14, 46; revolt of, 152 Qasim Khan, Mirza, 36 Qasr prison, 113, 115, 116 Qavam, Ahmad, 71-75, 77, 89, 95, 99, 124, 134, 145, 146, 148-156, 158, 172, 173 Qazi, Mohammad, 124, 142-143 Qazi, Sadr-i, Abdol Qasim, 131, 137, 175 Qazi, Saif-i, 162, 175 Qazvin, 25, 39 Qonatabani, Shamseh, 187 Qum, 2, 46, 111, 167, 217, 223 Qur'an, 39, 82 Ra'adeh Emruz, 125 Radmanesh, Reza, 114, 126 Rafsanjani, Hashemi, 220, 224-227 Rahbar, 126 Railroads, 19, 20, 203; Trans-Iranian, 102, 105 Rasht, 19, 33, 34, 41, 43, 47, 52, 64, 65, 67, 68, 79, 82-83, 86-90, 209, 220 Raskolnikov, Feodor, 63-65, 67 Rastakhiz Party, 203, 204, 206, 218 Razmara, Ali, General, 12, 92, 155, 156, 158, 167, 177, 178, 180, 182 Reagan, Ronald, 224 Red Army. See Soviet Union, troops Reformist Party, 94-96 Religion versus secularism, 13, 26, 29-42, 47, 53, 63, 65, 66, 68, 82, 83, 86, 90, 95, 96, 105, 110-112, 124, 167, 168, 173-175, 228, 229; in Islamic Revolution, 206, 210, 215, 217, 223, 225; among Mujahedin and People's Fedayin Guerrillas, 208-211; in National

294

INDEX

Front, 182, 183, 186, 187, 191, 193, 196 Reuter, Baron Julius von, 18 Revkom, 66 Revolutionary Committee, 28, 35 Revolutionary Committees, in Islamic Revolution, 221 Revolutionary Council, 220-222 Revolutionary Organization, 207 Revolutionary tribunals, 221, 223 Reza (shah) Pahlavi, 170; and British, 70, 71, 99, 100, 116-120, 180; and Communists, 73, 75-77, 112-116, 156; economic policy, 101-103, 108-110; and Persian chauvinism, 7, 106-108; rise to power, 8, 10, 29, 44, 45, 47, 88, 89, 92, 100; insecurity and rationalization of authority, 2, 15, 105, 106, 193, 203; society and politics under, 100, 103-106, 110-112, 122-125, 137, 143-145, 164, 175, 194, 214, 221; and Soviets, 7 5 - 7 7 , 85, 9 9 - 1 0 0 , 116-120, 135 Rezaieh, 143, 162, 168, 174, 221 Roads, 3, 19-20, 102-103, 198, 200 Romanovs, 17 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 134 Roshdiye, Mirza Hassan, 28 Rothstein, Fyodor A., 71, 74 Royal Dutch Petroleum Company, 118 Royal Dutch Shell, 190 Royal harem, 27 Russia, Tsarist (Russia before 1917), 10, 11, 13, 16-26, 28-30, 33, 38, 39, 43—47, 49, 59, 71, 229; cultural contacts with northern Iran, 18-22 Russian Civil War, 61, 68, 69 Russo-Japanese War, 28, 29, 38 Russo-Polish War, 65 Rusta, Reza, 126, 153, 171 Ruzbeh, Khosrow, 127, 137, 155, 189 Sa'ad Abad Pact, 117-118, 147, 191 Sadchikov, Ivan, 148 Sadr, Mohsen, 137-142, 146, 158 Saed, Mohammad, 133, 135, 136 Safavi dynasty, 2, 15 Saleh, Allahyar, 183 Sanandaj, 48, 220, 221 Sanjab tribe, 131 Sanjabi, Karim, 4, 75, 125, 128, 131, 170, 171, 179, 183, 185, 186, 188,

191, 192, 213, 2 1 7 - 2 1 9 Sarab (Colonel), 166 Sar Kosh, 88 Sattar Committee, 42 Sattar Khan, 4 0 - 4 3 Saudi Arabia, 134, 153, 157 SAVAK, 192, 197, 207, 217, 221 Schacht, Hjalmar, 118 Schlesinger, Arthur, 11 Schwartzkopf, H. Norman, 134 Second National Front, 191, 192 Secret Center, 35 Secret Committee, 113 Secret Society, 28 segmentation: and hierarchy, 5 - 6 , 163; ethnic, 3, 4, 6, 13, 14, 17, 20, 40, 44, 46, 47, 89, 108, 128, 142, 143, 160, 152, 164, 208, 221, 222; geographical, 3, 6, 13; ideological, 133, 166-168, 177; linguistic, 3, 4, 7, 13, 44, 126, 128, 130, 132, 137, 143, 166, 177, 221-222, 228; religious, 3, 4, 6, 13, 15, 20, 33, 44, 89, 129, 143, 162, 164, 168, 175, 221, 222, 228; tribal, 3, 4, 6, 14, 22, 40, 46, 47, 58, 131, 163, 175, 177 Senate, 179, 180, 187 Sepahdar-i Rashti, 42, 43, 44, 47, 70, 77 Sèvres Treaty, 123 Seyyed Zia Tabatabai. See Tabatabai Shabistari, Sayyid Mohammad, 35, 28 Shaffaq, 36 Shahsavan, 3, 4, 40, 47, 58, 70 Shaikhis, 25, 26, 41 Shaikholislam, 41 Shakkak tribe, 58, 98, 164, 175 Sharghi, 76 Shari'a, 9, 15, 26, 30, 34, 39, 40, 49, 105, 182 Shariati, Ali, 195, 211, 214 Shariatmadari, Kazem (Ayatollah), 215, 221, 223 Shatt al-Arab (Ervan Roud), 117 Shayegan, Ali, 125, 184, 213 Sheean, Vincent, 99 Shi'i Islam. See Islam Shiraz, 111 Shuster, W. Morgan, 43-45, 71 Siahkal, 210, 212 Siamak (Colonel), 127, 189 Silk, 16, 101, 109

INDEX Simko (Ismail Aga Samit Ghu), 58, 89, 98 Sino-Soviet relations, 213, 217 Socialist Group of the Tudeh Party of Iran, 176 Socialist Party, 126, 151 Social Revolutionary Party (Russian),

20

Social Democratic Party: of Iran, 20, 32-38, 41, 42, 58, 59; see also Democratic Party; Russian, 20, 3 4 36, 41, 4 2 Society of Moslem Warriors, 182, 184 Soheili, Ali, 131 South Persia Rifles, 47, 69, 71 Southern Movement, 152 Southern Tribes, 152, 154 Soviet Azerbaijan, 54, 142, 144, 147, 174 Soviet Union, 10-12, 20, 59, 60, 88, 89, 176; and Britain, 61, 68-77, 99, 106, 119, 120; and Azerbaijan/Kurdistan revolutions, 141, 142, 147; economic relations with Iran, 102, 116, 181, 182; and Gilan revolution, 52, 63-68, 78, 79, 86, 91, 92; Marxism and foreign policy of, 61-63, 73, 157, 228; and Germany, 118-120; and Mossadegh, 188; and Northern Iranian oil, 145148, 156; and 1919 Treaty, 54-56; and Razmara, 180-182; troops of, 61, 64, 69, 71, 72, 89, 122, 130, 141, 146, 148, 149; and Tudeh, 83, 90, 207, 208, 210; and United States, 153-158, 181, 188, 201, 203, 2 2 3 - 2 2 6 Soviets, 33, 47 Stalin, Joseph, 8, 9, 34, 35, 54, 62, 84, 86, 89, 91, 113, 147, 148, 157, 188, 207 Stalinism, 115 State Committee of the Democratic Party (Azerbaijan), 47-48, 56 Sugar, 23, 30, 101-103, 130 Sultanzadeh, Avetis, 59-60, 63, 76, 78, 79, 83-88, 90 Sunni Islam. See Islam Sur-i lsrafil, 36 Sykes, Sir Percy, 47 Syria, 120, 123 Szyliowicz, Joseph, 104

295

Tabari, Ehsan, 146, 222 Tabriz, 22, 88; and Azerbaijan revolution, 139-142, 147, 149, 151, 159-162, 164, 166-169, 175; and Bolshevik Revolution, 47; in Constitutional Revolution, 32-37, 39-41, 44; culture and economy, 18, 19, 25, 27, 28, 101, 109, 112, 130, 138, 139; and Islamic Revolution, 217, 220-222; and Khiabani, 5 7 58, 88; and Mossadegh, 184; and radical groups during 1970s, 209, 211; in World War II, 122, 129, 130, 131, 138 Tabatabai, Seyyed Zia, 28, 36, 70, 71, 77, 125, 127, 136, 149 Tabrizi, Ali Akbar Saberi, 29, 41 Tadayon, Mohammad, 131 Tajaddod, 57 Tajaddod Party, 95, 96 Talebof, Abdul Rahim, 29, 30, 37 Taleqani, Mahmoud (Ayatollah), 183, 194, 211, 221 Taqi Khan (Amir Kabir), 22-23, 25 Taqizadeh, Sayyid Hassan, 35, 43, 45, 51, 94, 101 Tarbiyat, Mirza Mohammad Ali Khan, 27, 35 Tariffs, 17 Taxes, 14, 16, 23, 40, 43, 44, 68, 99, 101-103, 111, 126, 180; in Constitutional Revolution, 30-33, 35, 42, 43; during World War I and Russian Revolution, 50-52, 54-56 Teachers' Association, 217 Tehran, 19, 22-23, 26, 29, 89, 96, 99, 106, 114, 121, 172, 209; in Constitutional Revolution, 30-33, 35, 42, 43; and economic centralism, 101, 114-115, 201; and Islamic Revolution, 218, 220; and National Front, 184-186; in World War I, 50-52, 54-56; in World War II, 123, 127, 130, 135, 138, 139 Tehran-centricism, 32, 101, 104, 111, 121, 126, 166, 201 Tehran Women's Anjoman, 44 Teymourtash, 101, 110 Third Force, 187 Third Majlis, 47 Third-power policy, 10, 13, 18, 25, 4 3 - 4 6 , 72, 113, 117, 185, 223, 228

296

INDEX

Tito, Josip Broz, 137 Tobacco, 16, 27, 28, 101, 109, 142 Toilers, 183, 184, 186, 187 Tripartite Commission, 146-157 Trotsky, Leon, 61, 65, 86 Trotskyism, 115 Trotskyites, 79, 86 Truman, Harry S„ 11, 12, 154, 180, 185 Truman Doctrine, 11, 12, 154, 157 Tudeh, 35, 104, 116; and Azerbaijan Democratic Party, 140, 166, 167, 171-173; Central Committee, 132133; First Party Congress, 132-133; factions in, 116, 173, 175-176, 183, 184; formation of, 122, 126; front organizations, 181, 184; military network, 127, 128, 166, 189, 190; and Mohammad Reza Shah, 179, 189, 191; and National Front, 183-189; parliamentarianism, 126, 127, 129, 131, 132; and Razmara, 180-182; see also Central Council of Federated Trade Unions; youth organization of, 210 Tufan, 207 Turkey, 7, 19, 26, 29, 46, 54, 75, 94, 96, 101, 108, 117, 118, 123, 154, 157 Turkmanistan, 210, 212, 222 Turkmans, 3 - 4 , 14, 15, 98 Twentieth Majlis, 192 Ulama, 15, 26, 27, 30-32, 37, 40, 42, 48, 95, 96, 112, 173 Umma, 26, 215, 223 Union of Workers and Artisans (UWA), 130, 131 United front, in Communist strategy and tactics, 62-65, 67, 68, 8 5 88, 9 0 - 9 1 , 160-162, 168, 172 United Nations, 147 United States, 10-12, 56, 71, 7 3 - 7 8 , 99, 122, 136, 138, 158; and Azerbaijan and Kurdistan revolutions, 142, 165, 174; and British, 134, 135, 148, 154; containment policy, 11, 12, 201; and Islamic Revolution and Republic, 213, 214, 216, 219, 2 2 2 226; Middle East policy of, 153— 154, 157; and Mohammad Reza

Shah, 179, 191-194; and oil, 72, 73, 133, 135, 148, 185, 188; "open door" policy, 72, 77, 145; and Razmara, 180-182, 197, 201 University of Tabriz, 161, 221 University of Tehran, 104, 110, 194, 208 Upper class, 205. See also landlords Urban lower class, 17, 19, 31, 34, 39, 48, 203, 206, 218, 223, 226, 229 Urumieh, 76, 169 UWA. See Union of Workers and Artisans Vatan, 223 Veil, 81, 110, 173 Velayat-i faqih, 214, 215, 221, 222 Voice of America, 181 von, Schirach, Baldur, 118 Vossugh al-Dowleh, 47, 48, 51, 53, 55-57, 64, 67, 69, 77 Waqf lands, 5, 112, 193 War communism, 82, 86 Wassmuss, Wilhelm, 46 White Revolution, 179, 192, 193 White Russians, 55 Women, 25, 33, 44, 66, 81, 87, 92, 125, 165, 173, 177; and education, 55, 104, 110; and suffrage, 159 World War I, 23, 44, 45-47, 49, 96, 98 World War II, 115, 118-120, 122, 125, 126 Wright, Quincy, 11 Writers' Association, 217 Xenophobia, 90 Yalta, 146 Yazd, 131 Yazdi, Morteza, 114, 151 Yeprom Khan, 4 1 - 4 3 Yugoslavia, 137 Zafar, 137, 171 Zahedi, Fazlollah (General), 89, 113, 188, 189 Zanjan, 25, 132, 150, 167 Zanjani, Mohammad (Ayatollah), 191 Zhdanov, Andrei, 157 Zhukov, M. E „ 190 Zinoviev, G„ 83, 85, 91 Zoroastrianism, 106 Zoroastrians, 3, 33