This issue of Revolutionary HIstory continues our coverage of the history of the Left in Iran. Episodesi nvestigated include:

• The foundation of the Tudeh Party of Iran in 1941.
• Moscow's attempt to set up a pro-Soviet autonomous republic in Iranian Azerbaijan in 1945.
• The fake assination attempt on the Shah and the ensuing banning of the Tudeh Party in 1949.
• The mass campaign to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company.
• The Tudeh Party's hostility to Mohammed Mosaddeq and the national-democratic movement.
• The Tudeh Party's failure to prevent the Anglo-American coup against Mosaddeq in 1953.
• The SAKA, an attempt to build a communist organisation based on workers' councils.
• The ideas of Mostafa Sho'a'iyan, a maverick Iranian marxist.
• The continued influence of Stalinism upon the historiography of the Iranian Left.
• The course of the Iranian Left as reported in documents from the British, Soviet and US official archives

ISBN 978-0-86036-656-3

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Many of the documents have never been published in English before and will be of great interest to scholars and to 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 Ira
• 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. The cover design features Kaveh the Blacksmith (Kaveh Ahangar), a revolutionary symbol that dates back to the earliest days of the struggle for national independence in Persia. Born in mythology, he became the standard for the Sassanid Persian state, and has been repeatedly adopted as the banner of resistance against imperialist domination of Iran.

ISBN 978-0-85036 672-3

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