New issue of Revolutionary History

The latest issue of Revolutionary History is now available. This issue, the second volume on the history of the Left in Iran, covers the period from 1941 to 1957, focusing on the Tudeh Party, the only substantial left-wing organisation in Iran in these times.

Episodes investigated 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 assassination 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 Mohammad 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 upon 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.

It has been compiled under the editorship of Cosroe Chaqueri, who has produced a number of pioneering studies on Iran and its left-wing movements, in particular the sole major work on the ill-fated soviet republic on the Caspian coast of Iran, The Soviet Socialist Republic of Iran, 1920-1921: Birth of the Trauma (Pittsburgh University Press, 1995). He is currently preparing two major studies on the Iranian communist movement of the interwar period. He has also compiled over 30 volumes of documents from the labour and left-wing movements of Iran, thus enabling students of Iranian history to read material which might otherwise be forgotten. The first instalment, The Left in Iran, 1905-1940, is still available. A further instalment, covering the period of 1958-1985, is currently being assembled.