This book examines the structure and ideology of all the main leftist groups in Iran. It considers their role in the Revolution, and analyses their relations with Khomeini and his colleagues. It also explains why the majority of the leftist organisations had defected from the Islamic regime by the summer of 1981. A second important theme of the book is the way in which the Soviet Union responded to the treatment of the Left by the Islamic government. Based on extensive analysis of original source material in Farsi and other languages and numerous interviews with leftist leaders and participants, the book provides a detailed portrait of the Left in contemporary Iran.

This volume - the first of two - examines the history of the Left in Iran. Many of the documents have never been published in English before and will be of great interest to scholars and activists interested in the roots of the present crisis. These texts provide new insights into early Iranian Socialist and radical movements. They probe and consider: why the workers' and socialist movements did not make the most of their opportunities; the role of British imperialism; how Lenin - and later Theodore Rothstein - influenced the left in Iran; whether there were divergent interests between the Iranian working class and the new Russian state. This account does not seek to make such questions easy, nor to tender solace in trying times. It is also filled with admirable, too often tragic, struggles and personal odysseys.

Even though the left has never held power in Iran, its impact on the political, intellectual and cultural development of modern Iran has been profound. This book's authors undertake a fundamental re-examination and re-appraisal of the phenomenon of leftist activism in Iran, interpreted in the broadest sense, throughout the period of its existence up to and including the present.

Based on many original documents, this book surveys Iranian political history from 1941 through 1957, focusing on the Tudeh Party: the only substantial left-wing organization in Iran during this period. Topics include the party’s relationship with the labor movement in Iran; its place in the mass movement demanding the nationalization of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company; its attitudes towards the country’s various governments; its relationship with the Soviet Union; and, in particular, its dealing with Moscow’s attempt to establish a pro-Soviet autonomous government in Iranian Azerbaijan in 1945. As it discusses the various blunders and failures made by the party over the years, this history considers how close the Tudeh Party came to being destroyed following the muses on the Anglo-American coup d’état against Mosaddeq’s government in 1953.

This book reveals aspects of the rise and fall of the European and Iranian Left, their conceptualization of Marxism and ideological formations. Questions regarding the Left and Marxism within two seemingly different economic, political and intellectual and cultural contexts require comprehensive comparative histories of the two settings. This project investigates the intellectual transformations, which the European and Iranian Left have experienced after the Russian Revolution to the present. It examines the impacts of these transformations on their conceptualizations of history and revolution, domination and ideology, emancipation and universality, democracy and equality. The monograph will appeal to researchers, scholars and graduate students in the fields of political science, Middle Eastern and European studies, political history and comparative politics.