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.

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.

Analyses the history of left-wing politics in Iran and its Russo-Caucasian origins during the Persian Constitutional Revolution. The book is also a history of the formative years of the socialist movement in Iran between the first Russian revolution of 1905 and the suppression of the Iranian constitutional regime by Tsarist forces in 1911.

In Empire of Terror Mark D. Silinsky argues that Iran is one of the United States' deadliest enemies.

In Empire of Terror Mark D. Silinsky argues that Iran is one of the United States’ deadliest enemies. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, known as the Guards, bring Iran’s sway over much of the greater Middle East and pose a growing existential threat to Western security. Providing insights gained from his thirty-eight years as an analyst in the U.S. defense intelligence community, Silinsky argues that Iran’s political leaders and Guards are animated by aggressive, unforgiving, and totalitarian principles. He draws historical parallels to the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany to compare the intelligence and security services of states with totalitarian aspirations and to illustrate ideological points of intersection—a collectivist mindset, intolerance for political deviation, strongly defined sex roles and hypermasculinity, and a ruthless determination to ferret out and destroy their enemies. Silinsky offers biographies and explanations of the ideology that propels some of Iran’s leaders, with global implications. Profiling the perpetrators, victims, heroes, villains, and dupes, Silinsky shines light on the human and inhumane elements in this distinctly Iranian drama. Although the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany have been defeated and belong to history, the Iranian threat is very much alive.

The First World War is often described as a regional war with few repercussions beyond Europe. However, by the dawn of the 20th century, global political and economic entanglements of empires and nation states had reached unprecedented dimensions. Consequently, the war affected the lives of millions of combatants and civilians alike: politically, socially and culturally. This book shifts the Eurocentric focus of Europeans fighting and dying on European battlefields to a broader, global perspective. With local accounts and perceptions ranging from Argentina to Afghanistan, from Iran to Senegal, the volume sheds light on the multitude of contributions to and consequences of the First World War all around the world.

A prominent civil servant, scientist, and intellectual, Taghi Erani was a pivotal figure in interwar Iran. Witness to two of the major political upheavals in the twentieth century—the rise of Pahlavi and the collapse of the Weimar Republic—he turned from fundamental science to leftwing activism and pacifism, leading to his arrest and death in prison. Younes Jalali traces his journey from Tehran to Berlin, where in the 1920s he crossed paths with the greatest German scientists and scholars of his day, including Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Friedrich Rosen, and published seminal works on psychology and political philosophy. In the 1930s, as Reza Shah pursued rapprochement with the Third Reich, Taghi Erani was caught up in a crackdown on left-wing and pro-labor activists. His life and death offer a unique lens through which to view modern Iranian intellectual and political history.