Moscow: IV RAS; Kraft+, 2004. 648 p. (Istoriya stran Vostoka. XX century)

A lot of scientific literature is devoted to the topic of the Islamic Revolution of 1978-1979 in Iran, but it still remains an insufficiently studied phenomenon in the world history of the XX century. And if in the Western Iranian studies for more than 25 years of the existence of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI), a mostly negative assessment of this historical event has been preserved, then in the domestic one, thanks to the cardinal socio-political transformations in our country, which dramatically changed the direction of its development, as a result of which historical science, including Iranian studies, it has chosen the path of objective research of historical facts and phenomena, and significant progress has been made.

The paradox of twentieth-century Iranian history is that the 2,500-year-old monarchy fell under the influence of the ideology of Shiism, which was introduced as an official religion by the monarchs themselves from the beginning of the XVI century, during the rule of the Safavid dynasty. The religious and political force that for almost half a thousand years regularly served the Iranian monarchs in strengthening the institutions of absolutism, turned out to be their gravedigger.

The policy of Shiite Iran is rooted in centuries of history, without which it is impossible to correctly assess the current fronde of Shiite clergy against the powerful leader of the Western world-the United States. After his coming to power in 1979 and the establishment of the Islamic Republic in the country, the geopolitical situation in this region of the world underwent a change.-

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la significant changes. The change of power in Iran occurred as a result of bloodshed and the violent overthrow of the ruling Pahlavi dynasty. The slogans of the revolution reflected the aspirations of the people to pursue their own independent policy, free from despotism and foreign interference. The religious influence of Shiite dogma on the spiritual education of the masses proceeded simultaneously with the formation of the religious and legal foundations of the Islamic faith, which was finalized in the theory of Ayatollah R. M. Khomeini velayate Faqih, which allowed the direct descendants of the family of the Prophet Muhammad to establish an Islamic form of government in Iran. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that the Iranians, having a rich thousand-year pre-Islamic culture, faced in the VII century with the primitive culture of Arab nomads, adopted Islam from the conquerors and on its basis preserved their unique civilization, giving it a unique flavor of the Quranic revelations.

The complex and largely contradictory history of twentieth-century Iran is highlighted in the monograph of the recently deceased prominent Russian historian S. M. Aliyev, who studied Iran throughout his academic career. It is no exaggeration to say that his work has taken a leading place in the works of not only domestic, but also foreign Iranian studies. The book is notable for its lack of political commitment and market conditions. Specialists in the history of Iran, as well as people of other professions who are interested in the foreign East, have inherited a serious work, characterized by a high scientific level, knowledge of the specifics and mentality of Iranians. The monograph shows the Islamic roots of the anti-Shah movement of the 1970s not as a manifestation of spontaneous social protest of Iranian Muslims, but as the only possible form of organized struggle of Iranian workers against the Shah's dictatorship and American dominance in Iran.

The expansion of the Iranian scientific research base on this topic was facilitated by the appearance in Iran of a large number of publications on poorly studied problems of the socio-political life of the Iranian society of the Shah's period. Without a thorough study of this literature, it is impossible to understand the nature of the current government in the country and the ways of its evolution. All together, including the architecture of the monograph, the style of presentation, and the scientific competence of the researcher, gave the work the character of an academic publication with a wide coverage of topics and problems that incorporated the main stages of Iran's development in the XX century. The factual basis of the monograph is significantly enriched by the discovery of secret funds managed by the former Central Committee of the CPSU. The documents extracted from these archives shed light on little-known pages of the USSR's policy towards its southern neighbor.

Perhaps none of the works of Russian Iranists presents the history of Iran in the 20th century in such a comprehensive and well-documented way. It begins with a description at the beginning of the century of the undivided domination of Iran's affairs by two imperialist powers - Great Britain and Tsarist Russia. They did not want to see Iran as a strong and independent state and, pursuing their geostrategic goals in the Middle East, sought to violate Iran's territorial integrity. And if Russia, in the event of victory in the war, was ready to sacrifice its right to a sphere of influence in Iran, in accordance with the Russian-British treaty of 1907, establishing control over the Black Sea Straits, then Great Britain was seriously preparing the ground for the rejection of Southern and even Central Iran.

The supply of Iranian oil to the world market provided the British with huge revenues thanks to the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC)* and provided the mistress of the seas with a stable source of cheap liquid fuel for her navy. Both Great Britain and tsarist Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century were concerned to preserve their privileges in Iran and keep out their competitors. This is evidenced by the text of the dispatch of the Charge d'affaires of Russia in Tehran V. F. Minorsky to Petrograd dated March 17, 1917, quoted by S. M. Aliyev: "I consider it useful to inform the Shah's government that Russia will continue to adhere to full cooperation with England in Persian affairs."

The monograph brings out of oblivion the question of the "autonomy" of the Iranian territories inhabited by Kurds, Iranian Turks (Azerbaijanis) and Turkmens under the Provisional Government of Russia in 1917, which were considered as a pilot ground for creating national autonomies with the participation of advisers seconded to the Russian consulates in Iran.-

* After 1935 - AINK.

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the Committee on National Issues "for a well-known agitation and for the direction of public thought". These plans corresponded to the growing interests of the Russian bourgeoisie, which was preparing for post-war expansion in the Iranian direction, which was not realized due to the October revolution of 1917 in Russia.

Understanding perfectly well that politics in the East cannot be done without the participation of secret diplomacy, S. M. Aliyev described the subversive activities of foreign intelligence and special services in Iran. A little-known page of history revealed in the monograph is the activities of the intelligence services of Germany and Ottoman Turkey on the territory of Iran during the First World War. Their goal was to involve the Afghan Emir Habibula in the war against England and Russia. The main character of the sabotage activity was a prominent expert on Iran, German captain Oskar von Niedermayer, who twice for his turbulent biography of a military intelligence officer during the First and Second World Wars was in Russian captivity, until, in the end, he was sentenced by a Soviet military tribunal as a war criminal to long-term imprisonment and ended his life in one of the from the Siberian camps.

However, the leader in the implementation of the policy of "decentralization" of the Iranian state was, of course, British intelligence. During the First World War, the British political resident P. Cox was active in the Persian Gulf zone. The main efforts of this agent were aimed at" staking out " the right of Great Britain to free access to oil reserves in the province of Khuzistan, at rejecting the Abadan oil field in favor of the British crown. Later becoming head of the diplomatic mission in Iran and British High Commissioner to Mesopotamia, P. Cox actively persuaded the British leadership, which at that time included Lord Curzon and the future "peacemakers" of Europe, W. Churchill and O. Chamberlain, to dismember the territory of Iran by forming a separate state in the south under the auspices of England. The implementation of such an initiative, according to Cox, was facilitated by the fact that the governors of the provinces of Isfahan, Yazd and Kerman were natives of the Bakhtiar tribes, who were used by the British not only to protect the oil fields of southern Iran, suppress strikes of oil workers, but also for more far-reaching purposes - to incite separatist sentiments inside the country, to fight against the democratic movement in northern Iran.

S. M. Aliyev paid great attention to the personality of an outstanding statesman of Iran in the 1920s-1930s. Reza Shah. Despite the unfavorable situation for him, he was able to realize step by step the main goal of his life - to eliminate the Qajar dynasty from power and seize the throne. It was not only his personal qualities that helped him do this: courage, bravery, bravery, natural intelligence, and willpower. Reza Shah went through all the stages of military growth-from a simple cavalryman to the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of Iran. His brilliant career was undoubtedly promoted by the rich military and combat experience that he gained during his service in the Persian Cossack division under the leadership of Russian officers, participating in combat clashes with rebellious tribes. Reza Shah moved closer to the British occupation authorities, resulting in a coup d'etat on February 21, 1921. According to the Iranian historian J. R. R. Tolkien, Sheikh ol-Islami, this saved Iran from the Bolshevik danger, i.e., the Cengeli movement. In December 1925. after the successful completion of the Khuzestan campaign, which resulted in the elimination of Reza Shah's last opponent, Sheikh Hazal, the Constituent Assembly, convened by the Majlis to resolve the issue of removing the Qajars from power, voted almost unanimously to elect Reza Shah as the crown Shah of Iran.

The monograph contains very interesting passages related to the case of Teymurtash, one of Reza Shah's closest associates in the struggle for power, who initiated the nation's struggle against the predatory activities of the APNK. His violent death, caused indirectly by the intercession of the Deputy People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the USSR L. Karakhan, worsened the monarch's relations with Moscow, which, as we know, remained so until his forced abdication in August 1941.

S. M. Aliyev has shed light on a very important period of Iran's history - the eve of World War II. This period has long been presented in foreign (mainly English) and domestic Iranian studies in a distorted form (in particular, on the pages of the textbook " History of Iran "(Moscow, 1977). This primarily concerned the motives of the rapprochement between the Reza Shah and Nazi Germany regimes, as well as the degree of its influence on Iran's foreign policy in the pre-war years.

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years. The author documents such motives for rapprochement and provides evidence of the complex and contradictory domestic and foreign policy of Reza Shah during this period, due to the desire of the Iranian dictator to strengthen his personal power both in political circles and among the military leadership of the army. Such a policy required great skill in maneuvering between Russia, Britain and Germany in order to preserve national sovereignty and independence, to keep a certain distance between these important players in the Middle East and the Persian Gulf, avoiding accusations of unilateral preferences of any of the parties. Referring to the report to the Foreign Office of the British diplomat E. Lambton, S. M. Aliyev gives a close to the truth number of German specialists-1700-2000 people. As the flames of World War II flared in Europe, and Reza Shah appointed Mateen Daftari, known for his sympathies for Hitler's Germany, to the post of Prime Minister of Iran, Reza Shah's pro-German policy took on a clear outline. This perception of Iran's foreign policy was not hindered even by the noisy case of Mohsen Jahansuz, one of the participants in the "anti-monarchist conspiracy", the first translator and publisher of Hitler's Mein Kampf, who was shot by a court verdict on February 23, 1940. Among the military elite of the Iranian army, calls began to be heard for the conclusion of a military alliance with Germany and for a "worthy meeting" of German troops in Transcaucasia. At the end of 1939, programs in Persian were broadcast from Berlin, designed to arouse sympathy among the Iranian population for the policies of nazi Germany.

Describing the history of Iran during the Second World War and the post-war period, S. M. Aliyev removed "white spots" from the most important stage of the country's socio-political development, which was not known to the general scientific community, since it also concerned the international policy of the Soviet government in very sensitive areas of Soviet-Iranian relations. And although much has been written on the most acute events of this period in Iranian Azerbaijan and Northern (Iranian) Kurdistan, as the author points out, all the available literature suffered from "one-sidedness and limited use of primary sources." By the end of the Soviet occupation forces ' stay in Northern Iran, cultural and national autonomies of Kurds and Azerbaijanis were formed with the centers of Tabriz and Mehabad. The leaders of the Republic of South Azerbaijan requested urgent assistance to the democrats of Northern Iran, including weapons. According to S. M. Aliyev, Stalin was personally requested by the head of the Communist Party of Soviet Azerbaijan, M. J. Bagirov. The political force guiding the struggle of the Iranian Kurds and Azerbaijanis was the democratic parties, which had absolute priority among other political associations in these national regions. At the same time, the left-wing forces represented by the pro-Soviet People's Party of Iran (Tudeh), three representatives of which were included in the government of Ahmed Qawam, also significantly strengthened their positions in the center. The withdrawal of Soviet troops and the strengthening of leftist and national-democratic forces could actually direct the development of Iran along a democratic path, which was unacceptable both for the Shah's court and for the West, which feared the strengthening of the Soviet Union's influence in the Middle East.

However, neither the high authority of the democrats among the Iranian Kurds and Azerbaijanis in the struggle for national autonomy, nor their support from Moscow, which achieved the signing of the Soviet-Iranian agreement on the recognition by the Iranian government of the status of national democratic entities of Iranian Azerbaijan and Northern Kurdistan, could save the Kurds and Azerbaijanis from defeat. Their tragedy was that the movement for autonomy was born during the Soviet occupation of Iranian territory and was led by local leaders who shared communist ideas. An important factor that negatively affected the activities of Azerbaijani and Kurdish democrats was the direct interference of " the leadership of the Soviet state party institutions in Moscow and Baku in the development and formation of the national democratic movement." It came to undisguised threats against the Tehran authorities, coming from Baku radio propagandists. After the democrats came to power in Iranian Azerbaijan, voices began to be heard from Tabriz about the need to reunite the two parts of Azerbaijan and create a single republic within the USSR. The final defeat of the democratic movement in Northern Iran was caused by the withdrawal of Soviet troops, which could not be prevented by the Soviet Union. Stalin, bound by allied obligations under the anti-Hitler coalition, as he told the leader of the Azerbaijani Democrats S. D. Pishevari in a personal letter dated May 8, 1946.

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The talent of the historian S. M. Aliyev was clearly shown in the study of the period of the reign of the last Iranian monarch, Muhammad Reza Pahlavi (1941-1979), which represents the crushing defeat of the entire pseudo-modern system of monarchical rule, which was built for decades, based on the principle of preserving the regime of personal power and self-enrichment, and not the welfare of subjects. The author's deep conclusions on all aspects of the domestic and foreign policy of the last monarch of Iran give a complete picture of the real and imaginary achievements of the country during that period.

The author touched upon Iran's economic problems. This applies primarily to the analysis of the role of the oil factor in the formation of the country's industrial economy. It can be said that the accumulated knowledge on the oil problem, embodied in many works of S. M. Aliyev, made him one of the most competent experts in this field. The author convincingly revealed the impulsive nature of the economic reforms, which received the pretentious name "White Revolution of the Shah and the People", which led to the loss of legislative control over the Shah's officials. As a result, Iran became a typical police state in the 1970s. The Shah's incompetence and arrogance in leading the country on the path of "great civilization" led to a loss of public sector efficiency, stagnation in socio-economic life, and impoverishment for the Iranian people, increased unemployment, mass migration of the rural population to the cities, and eventually to a social explosion. The degradation of the activities of public and political institutions also affected the personality of the very guarantor of state legitimacy - the Shah, who began to participate in the work of the Supreme Economic Council of Iran in order to: receiving commissions when entering into contracts with foreign firms. S. M. Aliyev considered the visit of the Shah to Qom on January 24, 1963, when the ulema of the Feyziyeh theological center obstructed him, to be the feature that finally divided the society and the Shah into two irreconcilable camps. After the humiliation of the Shah by Shiite authorities, the expression "black reaction" appeared in the Iranian official press, which meant the highest representatives of the Shiite clergy led by Ayatollah Khomeini. This visit was the prologue to the uprising of June 5, 1963, after Khomeini openly accused the Shah of betraying the interests of Islam in favor of the policies of the Zionists and the US government. The scale of the massacre of participants in anti-Shah protests is amazing: the number of people killed in Tehran alone was more than 5 thousand, 28 ayatollahs were imprisoned. The subsequent steps of the Shah led not only to the easing of social tension in the country, but also to the final loss of the people's trust in the government. The agony spread with incredible rapidity to all the structures of the Shah's regime.

S. M. Aliyev left behind a serious study of the period of the anti-monarchical revolution of 1978-1979. These studies are written in the best traditions of the national school of Russian and Soviet Iranian studies, which were characterized by the depth and breadth of research. They are written emotionally, they reflect the author's personal attitude to the events described. Without at all belittling the scientific level of the presentation, the author's emotions help to more visibly present the intensity of the revolutionary struggle of the Iranian people against the Shah's dictatorship and the dominance of American advisers in the country. The author debunks the far-from-true assessments of Iran's" rocket-like economic development, high level of prosperity and progress " under the Shah, which were purposefully introduced into the public consciousness of the Western world. An uncritical view of the situation in Iran was beneficial to the West, since it created the illusion of prosperity against the background of the deteriorating financial situation of the bulk of the working people, pushing the Shah to ruinous ambitious projects, regardless of costs and economic considerations. However, the statistics presented by the author refute the claim of Western experts about the prosperity of the economy of Shah's Iran.

The appearance of prosperity, behind which the contours of a social catastrophe were clearly visible and which the West did not want to see, was achieved first of all by an unprecedented increase in spending on food imports, which increased from $ 32 million to $ 1.5 - 2 billion during 1973-1977, and reached $ 2.5 billion in 1977-1978. dol. Even more impressive are the figures of per capita consumption in the countryside in relation to the city: before the start of the "white revolution" it was 1:2.1, in 1974-1: 4.15, and in 1978-1: 8. The United States and Great Britain, along with other Western countries, are responsible to the Iranian people for huge human and material losses. victims of the revolution and the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. With cynical frankness, this is evidenced by the cited examples. Aliev words of the English Lord Chalfont, you-

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razed the position of the Western world in relation to Iran, which was needed "for the survival of Western industrial society."

S. M. Aliyev gave his interpretation of the Islamic character of the revolution of 1978-1979, revealed the key concepts of the nature and driving forces of the revolution, its social content and slogans. In broad historical terms, he considered the main concepts of the monarchical system of state administration and the Shiite-Imamite worldview, which for many centuries coexisted in a single state feudal structure. The essence of these two institutions of power was revealed in different ways when they had to adapt to the changes in world politics of the XX century. A particular peak of change occurred in the decade 1963-1973, when oil revenues and the living standards of the general population were growing. The supreme power of the Shah acquired an absolutist character. However, the house of cards of alleged prosperity and inviolability of the Shah's power turned into a myth overnight, as soon as oil prices fell and Iran was faced with an inevitable catastrophe. All the programs of overcoming the crisis, both Marxist and bourgeois-nationalist, were ignored by Iranians, who began to listen to the words of Ayatollah Khomeini, who called on the people to return to the purity of Islam and build a state based on the principles of Touhid (monotheism).

S. M. Aliev's monograph is of scientific value not only for Iranian historians, but also for the Russian public. It can serve as a warning to its ruling class, since the abundance of petrodollars in the country, leading to its enrichment, can cause deep socio-political cataclysms.

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