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Anatomy of an Iranian Political Crowd: The Tehran Bread Riot of December 1942

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Stephen L. McFarland
Stephen L. McFarland
Affiliation:
Department of HistoryAuburn University
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Extract

During the morning of December 8, 1942, a large group of university students paraded through the streets of Tehran to the parliament building on Baharistan Square to demand higher bread rations and prompt action on critical problems by an incompetent government and an inactive parliament. Spectators and organized groups from South Tehran added their numbers to the already large crowd. Police forces withdrew from the square and the demonstration became a riot. The crowd occupied the parliament building and moved toward the commercial district, smashing windows and signs and looting stores along the way. On the morning of December 9, students again instigated a march to the parliament building, but this time army troops firing machine guns met and dispersed them. Although city shops were closed on December 9, some reopened on December 10, and all reopened on December 11; normality had returned. The bread riot claimed over 20 people killed, 700 wounded, 150 arrested, and 150 stores sacked and burned.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 17 , Issue 1 , February 1985 , pp. 51 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

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References

1 Official government casualty estimates have been used in this case because they are the only published figures available. Allied intelligence reports duplicated these figures, though the reports did question their accuracy. Official government counts, however, are notoriously underestimated. The use of machine guns against massed urban mobs, especially given the condition of wartime Iran's medical services, makes these statistics questionable at best.Google Scholar

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12 FRUS, 1942, 4:336.Google Scholar

13 Ibid., 4:151.

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30 Baharistan or Parliament Square is a large open area immediately before the parliament building at the intersection of three major streets: Ibn Sina, Shah Abad, and Modarris. It was therefore ideal as an assembly point for the protestors and rioters.Google Scholar

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32 The shah promoted Colonel Arfa to general immediately after the riot. For an eyewitness account of the mob's actions in the parliament building, see Kirmani, , Az Shahrivar-e 1320, 2:349–56.Google Scholar

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34 A Free Polish army was established in Iran beginning in 1941 from among Polish soldiers and refugees captured by the Soviets in 1939.Google Scholar

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36 Four hundred grams of unleavened bread contains about 1,100 calories, just above what was considered the starvation level in World War II.Google Scholar

37 “The Recent Disorders in Teheran”; Lloyd, Food and Inflation, pp. 240, 164–65;Google ScholarFRUS, 1943, 4:603, 606–8, 610–15, 623, 576; untitled report, October 13, 1944, RG226, L4946I, OSSNA; and untitled report, November 7, 1944, RG226, L49151, OSSNA.Google Scholar

38 New York Times, February 7, 1943, p. 5;Google ScholarIbid., February 15, 1943, p. 5; Ibid., February 23, 1943, p. 6; Dreyfus to Hull, February 15, 1943, RG59, 891.00/1993, DSNA;Google ScholarDreyfus to Hull, January 20, 1943, RG59, 891.00/1983, DSNA;Google ScholarDreyfus to Hull, January 29, 1943, RG59, 891.00/1990, DSNA;Google ScholarFRUS, 1942, 4:221–22; and “The Recent Disorders in Teheran.” The Tudeh party played no visible role in the December bread riot.Google Scholar

39 FRUS, 1943, 4:355–59, 331–36;Google Scholar and FRUS, 1942, 4:214–17.Google ScholarOn the attempt to attract a greater American involvement, see McFarland, Stephen L., “A Peripheral View of the Origins of the Cold War: The Crises in Iran, 1941–1947,” Diplomatic History 4 (Fall 1980), 333–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

40 In 1946 Qavam again used the Tehran crowd to close parliament and as an excuse to suppress the press and arrest political opponents during the crisis over the refusal of the Soviet Union to withdraw its forces from Iran. See untitled report, March 29, 1946, RG226, XL50148, OSSNA.Google Scholar

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42 Times (London), December 12, 1942, p. 3;Google Scholar and Popov, “Nachalo Agressii SShA,” pp. 39, 41.Google Scholar

43 Although the disturbances connected with the Tobacco Rebellion in 1890–1892 were based on religious scruples against an infidel handling an item of daily and intimate use, in 1942 Iranians showed no apparent compunction in consuming bread made from wheat grown by infidels and baked and distributed under the direction of infidels.Google Scholar

44 See Kettering, Judicial Politics, p. 4. Kettering has examined the role of the political elite in seventeenth-century urban riots of Aix-en-Provence, France.Google Scholar