Iran Between Two Revolutions

The study, however, gradually expanded as the author realized that Tudeh’s success could not be fully assessed without constant references to the failures, on the one hand, of its many contemporary nationalistic parties and, on the other hand, of its ideological predecessors, especially the Social Democrats of 1909-1919, the Socialists of the 1920s, and the Communists of the 1930s.

The study further expanded as the 1977-1979 revolution unfolded, shattered the Pahlevi regime, and brought to the fore not the Tudeh but the clerical forces. Thus the study has evolved into an analysis of the social bases of Iranian politics, focusing on how socioeconomic development has gradually transformed the shape of Iranian politics from the eve of the Constitutional Revolution in the late ‘nineteenth century to the triumph of the Islamic Revolution in February 1979.

The book is divided into three parts. Part I provides a historical background to the understanding of modern Iran, surveying the nineteenth century, the Constitutional Revolution, and the reign of Reza Shah.

Part II analyzes the social bases of politics in the period between the fall of Reza Shah’s autocracy in August of 1941 and the establishment of Muhammad Reza Shah’s autocracy in August 1953. These thirteen years are the only major period in the modern era in which the historian can look below the political surface into the social infrastructure of Iranian politics, and thereby examine in depth the ethnic as well as the class roots of the various political movements. Readers who are not interested in the internal workings of the communist movement in this period are advised to skim Chapters 7 and 8, which examine in detail the class and ethnic bases of the Tudeh party.

Part III examines contemporary Iran, describing Muhammad Reza Shah’s SOCIO economic programs, the political tensions aggravated by these programs, and eventually the eruption of the recent Islamic Revolution. Download in pdf format to read offline.