Lana (Svetlana) Ravandi-Fadai

She is the author of over 50 scholarly articles. Her book, Political Parties and Organizations of Iran (2010), traces the formation of modern political parties in Iran around the start of the 20th century up to the present, and was chosen out of 700 new publications as runner-up for Best Scholarly Book of the Year at the Institute of Oriental Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences. Her next book, co-authored with Dr. Touraj Atabaki, is titled, Victims of Their Faith, and will trace the fates of Iranian Communist revolutionaries in the first half of the 20th century. It will be published in three languages in 2014. Another book by Dr. Ravandi-Fadai, “Doctor Mossadeq: His Life and Deeds,” is also scheduled for publication in 2014.
In 2010, she was awarded a Golam Hossein Sadiqi Fellowship for research work at the Institute for Social History in Amsterdam under the Royal Academy of Sciences of the Netherlands. Lana graduated from the Eastern Studies Department of Baku State University and, in 1997, received her Master’s Degree as a Regional Specialist in Iran from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations. In 2002, she successfully defended her dissertation to become a Doctor of Historical Sciences. Since 1998, she has worked as a research fellow and taught Persian language and literature in the Iranian Studies Sector of the Institute of Oriental Studies under the Russian Academy of Sciences.
In addition to participating in international conferences in Russia, Iran, the Netherlands, Turkey, the United States, Great Britain, and Greece, Dr. Ravandi-Fadai has been invited to speak at prestigious institutions of learning such as the University of Tehran and Oxford University.
Her works examine political and social developments in contemporary Iran – political parties and factions, government institutions, educational policy, and ethnic and women’s issues.

"The Great Terror was a tragedy for all the peoples of the Soviet Union in which the director remained behind the scenes and the players, who were honest Soviet citizens trying to build their country, were reduced to pawns. The country was a besieged fortress with a struggling organism inside. People were conditioned by the party to charge into battle against anything. To destroy the enemy was a sacred duty. No warrior can dare to discuss, to doubt, to spend time gathering evidence: he is bound to act. No army can last without these qualities, and any fortress will fall into enemy hands. The strange side of it is that the jailers were much like the prisoners. All must go to their death if the order comes down. Paradoxically, most were loyal, passionate and self-sacrificing sons of their country. People were called to meetings where they were informed of crimes against the state committed by their comrades, who had seemed as good and free of any stain as pure crystal. But once hypnotized, the listeners forgot about friendship, respect and conscience, and all raised their hands in unison, in support of murder."

Modern political history of Iran; Iranian political parties; Russo-Iranian relations; Ethnic and Religion Minorities; Persian literature and language; methods and theory of teaching the Persian language

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Researcher in Iranian history; lecturer in Farsi, Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam