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Informationen zum Autor Maziar Behrooz is Associate Professor of History at San Francisco State University, USA. He has authored numerous articles and book chapters on the 19th and 20th-century history of Iran. His first book, Rebels with a Cause: the Failure of the Left in Iran (1999), has been translated into Persian and Turkish. His second book, Perspectives on the History of Rebels with a Cause in Iran (2006), is a translation of a collection of articles and interviews on the left movement in Iran, published in Tehran. To find out more please visit: https://faculty.sfsu.edu/~mroozbeh Klappentext Why were left-wing politics so ineffective in Iran while socialism and communism were making great strides in the rest of the world? Why did the Left not capitalise on Iran's brief fling with anti-western politics in the early 1950's before the CIA and MI6 inspired military coup which restored the Shah to his throne? And above all why was the Left so crushingly defeated after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran? The author unearths new details and provides fresh insights into an enduring puzzle of modern Iranian political history, concluding that the Left's demise came from a combination of Iran's geopolitical setting, where both the Soviet and western worlds saw advantage in the stability of Iran during the Cold War, as well as internal factors such as splits and factionalism, and - not least - the Iranian Left's over-enthusiastic devotion to a barren Stalinism with its poverty of philosophy and ideas. Based on primary and secondary Persian-language sources never before published in English, this book is a crucial addition to the literature on modern Iranian history and the study of communist and socialist history in general. Vorwort This work unearths details and provides updated insights into an enduring puzzle of modern Iranian political history, concluding that the Left's demise came from a combination of Iran's geopolitical setting, as well as internal factors such as splits and factionalism. Zusammenfassung Why were left-wing politics so ineffective in Iran while socialism and communism were making great strides in the rest of the world? Why did the Left not capitalise on Iran’s brief fling with anti-western politics in the early 1950’s before the CIA and MI6 inspired military coup which restored the Shah to his throne? And above all why was the Left so crushingly defeated after the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran?The author unearths new details and provides fresh insights into an enduring puzzle of modern Iranian political history, concluding that the Left’s demise came from a combination of Iran’s geopolitical setting, where both the Soviet and western worlds saw advantage in the stability of Iran during the Cold War, as well as internal factors such as splits and factionalism, and - not least - the Iranian Left’s over-enthusiastic devotion to a barren Stalinism with its poverty of philosophy and ideas. Based on primary and secondary Persian-language sources never before published in English, this book is a crucial addition to the literature on modern Iranian history and the study of communist and socialist history in general. Inhaltsverzeichnis Introduction1. Defeat and Revival: The Great Defeat of the Left (1953-70)2. Offensive and Stalemate (1971-79): Violence and Suppression3. Revolution: the Dance of Death (1979-83)4. Why the Failure? Appendix: Chronology of Events (1941-83)Notes on the Text,BibliographyIndex...
