Revolution and Reform in Russia and Iran

Modernisation and Politics in Revolutionary States

Ghoncheh Tazmini

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781848855540
• eBook ISBN: 9780857730701
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: 20th Century History
• Index: History

The Russian Revolutions of 1917 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979 are two examples of dramatic, sudden and extraordinary political upheaval that significantly altered the nature of the state and society in the modern age. Here, Ghoncheh Tazmini provides an unprecedented comparative study of these two major revolutions of the twentieth century, which although removed from each other both spatially and temporally, have striking similarities. Examining the roots, events and impact of these two defining upheavals, Tazmini analyses how they resemble each other, stressing the continuity of the dilemma of modernisation for the Romanov, Pahlavi, Communist and Islamist rulers alike. This book is a significant contribution to both historical and contemporary debates concerning Russian and Iranian politics, and to the discourse on the origins and consequences of modernisation and revolution themselves.

NOTES

All URLs are correct at the time of writing

Chapter I

1 Tim McDaniel, The Agony of the Russian Idea (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1996).

2 J. Carter, Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Jimmy Carter, 1977 (Washington, GPO, 1978), pp. 2221–2.

3 Fred Halliday, Islam and the Myth of Confrontation: Religion and Politics in the Middle East (London, I.B. Tauris, 1996), p. 56.

4 Theodore von Laue, ‘A Secret Memorandum of Sergei Witte on the Industrialisation of Imperial Russia’, Journal of Modern History 26/1, 1954, p. 66.

5 Abraham Yarmolinsky (ed. & trans.), The Memoirs of Count Witte (NY, Doubleday Page, 1921), p. 59.

6 The expenditures in the Five-year Development Plan ran to over $100 billion more than the recommended estimates.

7 Robert Graham, The Illusion of Power (London, Croom Helm, 1978), p. 78.

8 Arthur E. Adams (ed.), Imperial Russia After 1861 (Boston, Heath and Company, 1965), p. x.

9 Homa Katouzian, The Political Economy of Modern Iran: Despotism and Pseudo-modernism, 1926–1979 (NY, New York University Press, 1981), p. 247.

10 Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet, ‘The Evolving Polemic of Iranian Nationalism’, in Nikkie Keddie & Rudi Matthee (eds), Iran and the Surrounding World: Interactions in Culture and Cultural Politics (University of Washington Press, 2002), pp. 163–4.

11 Hamid Algar, Mirza Malkum Khan: A Study in the History of Iranian Modernism (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1973), p. 92.

12 Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi, Refashioning Iran: Orientalism, Occidentalism and Historiography (NY, Palgrave, 2001), p. 102.

13 Ulrich Beck et al., Reflexive Modernization: Politics, Tradition and Aesthetics in the Modern Social Order (Cambridge, Polity Press, 1994), p. 2.

14 http://­www.washprofile.org/­en/­node/­7601.

15 Alexander Chubarov, Russia’s Bitter Path to Modernity (NY, Continuum, 2001), p. 257.

16 Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (NY, Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 4.

17 Ellen Kay Trimberger, Revolution from Above: Military Bureaucrats and Development in Japan, Turkey, Egypt and Peru (New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Inc., 1978).

18 Samuel Huntington, ‘The Political Modernization of Traditional Monarchies’, Daedalus 59 (Summer 1966), pp. 763–88. Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1968).

19 Tim McDaniel, Autocracy, Modernization and Revolution in Russia and Iran (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991).

20 Ted Gurr, Why Men Rebel (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1970), pp. 24–5.

21 James Davies, ‘The J-Curve of Rising and Declining Expectations: A Case of Some Great Revolutions and a Contained Rebellion’, in Hugh Davies Graham & Ted Robert Gurr (eds), Violence in America (NY, Signet Books, 1969), pp. 671–709.

22 Misagh Parsa, States, Ideologies and Social Revolutions (NY, Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 12.

23 Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Reading, Addison, 1979).

24 Barrington Moore, Jr., Injustice: The Social Basis of Obedience and Revolt (NY, M. E. Sharpe, 1978), pp. 472–3.

25 Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1979).

26 Jack A. Goldstone, Revolution and Rebellion in the Early Modern World (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1991), p. 111.

27 Samuel Huntington, ‘The Clash of Civilizations?’ Foreign Affairs 72 (Summer 1993), p. 22.

28 Ghoncheh Tazmini, Khatami’s Iran (London, I.B. Tauris, 2009), pp. 81–84, 152, 159.

29 Bernard Lewis, What Went Wrong: Western Import and Middle Eastern Response (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002).

30 Francis Fukuyama, ‘On Writing a Universal History’, in Arthur Melzer et al. (eds), History and the Idea of Progress (NY, Ithaca, 1995), p. 16.

31 Ibid., pp. 16–17.

32 Ibid., p. 17.

33 Edward Said, Orientalism (NY, Vintage Books, 1978), p. 2.

34 Ali Mirsepassi, Intellectual Discourse and the Politics of Modernity (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000), p. 17.

35 Marshall Berman, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (NY, Penguin, 1988), p. 15.

36 Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 174–5.

Chapter II

1 Richard Pipes, Russia Under the Old Regime (London, Penguin, 1974), pp. 2–4.

2 W. E. Mosse, An Economic History of Russia, 1856–1914 (London, I.B. Tauris, 1996) pp. 4–6.

3 Alexander Chubarov, The Fragile Empire (NY, Continuum, 1999), p. 3.

4 Firuz Kazemzadeh, Russia and Britain in Persia, 1864–1914: A Study in Imperialism (New Haven, New Haven Press, 1968), p. 32.

5 George Curzon, Persia and the Persian Question (London, Longman, 1892), p. 480.

6 Amin Saikal, The Rise and Fall of the Shah (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 15.

7 Christopher Pass et al., Dictionary of Economics (NY, Harper Collins, 1991), pp. 330, 434.

8 Evge...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Author biography
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Dedication page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• I Revolution and Modernisation: The Theoretical Context
• II Historical Patterns of Modernisation from Above
• III Modernising Romanov Russia and Pahlavi Iran
• IV Preserving the Russian Autocrat and the Iranian Despot
• V The Revolutionary Movement and Moment
• VI Post-Revolutionary Modernisation: Alternative Modernities
• VII Transcending the Modernisation Dilemma
• VIII Conclusion
• Afterword by Dr. Mahmoud Vaezi
• Notes
• References