The Communist Movement in Iran (1920s-early 1930s): national, regional and international contexts

The history of the Iranian communist movement is an integral and important part of the modern history of Iran and international relations. However, the history of the revolutionary events in Gilan (1920-21) remains the most studied in that field (Chaqueri (1995), Genis (2000), Ravasani (1381/2002), Dobakhshari (1394/2015). Some aspects of the communist movement in Iran in the interwar period are touched upon in the works of Tulsiram (2003), Halliday (2004), Atabaki (2004), Maraghei (1381/2002), Khosropanah and Bast (1392/2013). The attempts to give a complete picture of the Iranian Communist Party’s (ICP) activities (Zabih (1966), Tulsiram (1981), Chaqueri (2010) have a significant flaw in the form of insufficient use of documents from Soviet/Russian archives. Eventually, the most studied sphere of the ICP’s activity is its work in Iranian trade unions and issues related to the labor movement in Iran (Ladjevardi (1985), Saidi and Mahmudi (1381/2002), Bayat (2007), Willem Floor (2009), Cronin (2010).
At the same time, the history of the Iranian communist movement cannot be understood outside of the unity of national, regional, and international contexts. The regional and international contexts are inextricably linked with the interaction of Iranian communists with the Bolshevik leaders, structures of the RCP(b) and state bodies of the Soviet republics, as well as international communist structures. The strategic importance of the Caspian region should be considered as well as the dynamics of the international situation of the Soviet state and Soviet-Iranian relations. Therefore, we see the attempts of some researchers to describe the Iranian Communists’ activities primarily in the national context, de facto ignoring or minimizing the influence of the Bolsheviks, or reducing it exclusively to discrete negative manifestations, as insufficiently methodologically justified. At the same time, the other extreme would be to reduce the role of national communist parties to a simple appendage of the Soviet foreign policy mechanism.
Based on unpublished and published materials from Russian, British and Iranian archives, periodicals and memoirs, the author attempts to study the main issues of the Communist Movement in Iran in 1920s-early 1930s: its strategy and tactics, factionalism and ideological trends in the ranks of the Iranian communists, the organizational structure of the ICP and the interaction of the party center with provincial organizations, the relations of the Iranian Communists with the Bolshevik leadership, the Soviet republics’ state apparatus and international communist structures.