The left in Iran
Illusion and disillusion
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10279943 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stephanie Cronin (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2000 |
| Volume | 36 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 231-243 |
| Publication date | 2000-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Middle Eastern Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-3206 • E-ISSN: 1743-7881 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/00263200008701326 |
| OpenAlex | W2070764837 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 2 |
The Left has never held power in Iran, has never come close to holding power, even for a brief historical moment. Yet its impact on the political and intellectual history of the country has been profound. From the constitutional period, through the oil nationalization crisis, to the Islamic revolution, leftist forces have played a significant and even, as Maziar Behrooz remarks, sometimes a determining role.' Their influence, in both organizational and ideological terms, on the evolution of Islamist trends, including on Khumayni himself, is clear. The leftist forces in Iran have been, furthermore, historically among the most advanced in the nonEuropean world. At the very beginning of the twentieth century socialdemocratic ideas made rapid headway, first among Iranians in emigration in the Caucasus of the late Russian Empire and then in Iran itself. In 1920 local communists joined with the Jangali movement to produce in Gilan the first declaration of a Soviet republic in the Middle East while, in prerevolutionary 1978, working-class action was decisive, the wave of economic and political strikes which swept the country between June and December of that year constituting a phenomenon rare, if not unique, in the experience of the Middle East. The proximity of Iran to the Soviet Union has always been a crucial component in these developments. Contact with the Russian socialdemocratic milieu provided inspiration during the constitutional years while radicals on the left wing of the constitutional movement, such as the poet Abulqasim Lahuti, received their first education in Marxism from the soldiers' committees set up within the disintegrating Tsarist armies in Iran in 1917. The impetus given to the left in Iran was organizational as well as ideological. It was under the umbrella of Soviet power that the Tudeh made such great strides in the 1940s. Yet for the Iranian left the power of their Soviet neighbour was a double-edged sword. The Tudeh discovered, as communist parties elsewhere had already found to their cost, that it was all too easy for the fraternal solidarity of the CPSU to slip into a menacing quasi-imperial domination and the interests of the Iranian communist movement to become identified with the needs of the Soviet state
Ancient history · Economics · Middle East · Middle Eastern studies · Political economy · Political science · History · Islamic Studies and History · Law · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · Turkey's Politics and Society
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,38 |
| Citation span | 2018 - 2024 (7) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |