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Iran: A Theory of Revolution from Accounts of the Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2011

Marvin Zonis
Marvin Zonis
Affiliation:
Behavioral Sciences at the University of Chicago
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Extract

Four issues must be articulated and related in order to create a general theory of revolution: revolutionary leadership and organization, mass participation, the nature of revolutionary action, and system response. Recent studies of the Iranian revolution provide abundant descriptive materials relevant to the last three issues, but little to illuminate the nature of the leadership of the revolution or its organization. Few of the studies attempt to analyze their materials in a theoretically useful way. A psychoanalytical interpretation of revolutionary action and of the Shah's response is one way of moving toward a general theory. His leadership failure, explained in terms of his personal history and character structure, is a powerful way to account for the revolution itself as well as for its outcome.

Type
Review Articles
Information
World Politics , Volume 35 , Issue 4 , July 1983 , pp. 586 - 606
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1983

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References

1 A number of other books on Iran have recently been published; they suffer from most of the weaknesses of the studies under review here. See, for example, Farah, , Shahbanou, of Iran, , My Thousand and One Days, trans. from the French by Harcourt, Felice (London: W. H. Allen, 1978)Google Scholar; Fischer, Michael J., Iran: From Religious Dispute to Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Keddie, Nikki R., Roots of Revolution: An Interpretive History of Modern Iran (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1981)Google Scholar; McFadden, Robert D., Treaster, Joseph B., and Carroll, Maurice, eds., No Hiding Place: Inside Report on the Hostage Crisis (New York: New York Times Books, 1981)Google Scholar; Salinger, Pierre, America Held Hostage: The Secret Negotiations (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981)Google Scholar; and Zabih, Sepehr, The Mossadegh Era, Roots of the Iranian Revolution (Chicago: Lake View Press, 1982).Google Scholar

2 It is gratifying to see the careful work now being done on the opposition. See, for example, Bill, James A., ‘Power and Religion in Revolutionary Iran,’ in Middle East Journal 36 (No. 1, 1982), 22–47.Google Scholar

3 For more detailed accounts of the events of 1963, see Zonis, Marvin, The Political Elite of Iran (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 151ff.Google Scholar, and Algar, Hamid, “The Oppositional Role of the Ulama in Twentieth Century Iran,” in Keddie, Nikki R., ed., Scholars, Saints and Sufis—Muslim Religious Institutions in the Middle East Since 1500 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972), 231–55.Google Scholar

4 Salinger (fn. 1), 102.

5 It is of great symbolic significance to the revolution that Jhaleh Square, an undistinguished public place in a lower-class neighborhood of south Tehran, served as the focus of so much of the revolution. During the turmoil of the Mossadeq period, Baharestan Square played that role. Baharestan was not only surrounded by Tehran's middle classes, but was bordered by the building that housed the Parliament, for whose centrality to Iranian politics Mossadeq's supporters were struggling.

6 See one of a recent series of articles in the Washington Post, by Scott Armstrong, February 3, 1982, p. 10. Ironically, it was John D. Stempel, then the highest-ranking Persian-speaking American diplomat, who transmitted that tacit approval to the Iranians.

7 Mehran, Farhad, “Income Distribution in Iran, The Statistics of Inequality,” Working Paper, Income Distribution and Employment Programme (Geneva: ILO, October 1975)Google Scholar; Pesaran, M. H., “Income Distribution and Its Major Determinants in Iran,” in Jacqz, Jane, ed., Iran: Past, Present, Future (New York: Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, 1976)Google Scholar; Skolka, Jiri and Garzuel, Michael, “Changes in Economic Distribution, Employment and Structure of the Economy: A Case Study of Iran,” Working Paper, Income Distribution and Employment Programme (Geneva: ILO, 1976)Google Scholar; Wright, George E., “Regional Inequality in the Economic Development of Iran,” Ph.D. diss. (University of Michigan, 1977).Google Scholar

8 Quoted by Ledeen, and Lewis, from Menashri, David, “Iran,” in Legum, Colin and Shakhed, Haim, eds., Middle East Contemporary Survey, III, 1978–1979 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1980).Google Scholar

9 Walton, , “Economic Development and Revolutionary Upheavals in Iran,” Cambridge Journal of Economics 4 (1980), 271–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 286.

10 Hirschman, Albert O., “The Changing Tolerance for Income Inequality in the Course of Economic Development,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 87 (1973), 544–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 See, for example, Brinton, Crane, The Anatomy of Revolution (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965)Google Scholar; Davies, James C., “Toward a Theory of Revolution,” in Paynton, C. T. and Blackey, R., eds., Why Revolution? (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1971)Google Scholar; Davies, James C., ed., When Men Revolt—and Why (New York: Macmillan, 1971)Google Scholar; Gurr, Ted Robert, Why Men Rebel (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

12 For a basic statement of the issues of narcissistic injury and narcissistic rage, see Kohut, Heinz, The Analysis of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1971)Google Scholar, and Kohut, , The Restoration of the Self (New York: International Universities Press, 1978).Google Scholar For applications of these ideas, see Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, Committee on International Relations, Self-Involvement in the Middle East Conflict 10 (November 1978)Google Scholar, and Marvin Zonis, “Self-Objects, Self-Representation, and Sense Making Crises: Political Instability in the 1980's,” forthcoming.

13 For an effort to evaluate the role of SAVAK in Pahlavi Iran, see Zonis, Marvin, “The Shah of Iran—An Assessment,” Boston Globe, August 3, 1980, pp. A1–A3.Google Scholar

14 For a highly elaborate essay on the father-child/ruler-ruled parallel in Iranian history, see Reza Baraheni's provocative essay, “Masculine History,” in The Crowned Cannibals, Writings on Repression in Iran (New York: Vintage Books, 1977).Google Scholar

15 Kohut (fn. 12), develops the psychoanalytic theory which demonstrates that narcissistic injury is the necessary precursor of rage. Studies that link such rage to political processes include Zonis, Marvin, “Some Possible Contributions of the Psychology of the Self to the Study of the Arab Middle East,” in Goldberg, Arnold, ed., Advances in Self Psychology (New York: International Universities Press, 1980), 439–46Google Scholar, Zonis (fn. 12), and Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry (fn. 12).

16 A recently published study minimizes the role of the CIA and British intelligence in the 1953 coup; see Zabih (fn. 1). For another recent work (which maximizes the role of the CIA), see Roosevelt, Kermit, Countercoup, The Struggle for the Control of Iran (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979).Google Scholar

17 I obtained this account of the events of June 1963 in several recent interviews with some of the participants.

18 Saikal's quote actually refers to the post-Mossadeq period, but the point remained applicable throughout the Shah's rule.